

COPYRIGHT DEPOSIT 























FOLDING 

BEDOUINS 








And so , early of a cold and gray Sunday . 

















FOLDING 

BEDOUINS 

or, ADRIFT IN A TRAILER 
By HOWARD VINCENT O’BRIEN 

Illustrations by ROBERT MILLS 



Willett, Clark & Company 
Chicago New York 

1936 




a 





Copyright 1936 by 
WILLETT, CLARK & COMPANY 


Manufactured in The U. S. A. by The Plimpton Press 
Norwood, Mass.-La Porte, Ind. 


©CiA 961 93 , 


JUN 27 1936 




To 

HAL O’FLAHERTY 

WHO STARTED IT ALL 


4 


CONTENTS 


" NO MORE HOUSE CATS! ” i 

ALL THE COMFORTS OF HOME 6 

TWINGES OF NOSTALGIA 11 

DEVELOPING A TECHNIQUE 15 

VARIATION ON AN OLD THEME 20 

NOT ALL PLAY 25 

FIGURING THE COST 29 

UNWELCOME GUESTS 33 

EATING AND BEING EATEN 38 

TALL TALE 42 

“ TWEEN WHEELS ” 46 

ON THE ROAD AGAIN 50 

POOR MAN’S PARADISE 54 

LETTERS FROM HOME 58 

YES-NO ORANGE JUICE 61 

NO REST CURE 65 

LIKE CINDERELLA 69 

WASTED COMPLIMENTS 74 

GOURMET’S DREAM 79 

NEW WORLDS CONQUERED 83 


Contents 


THROUGH THE NEEDLE S EYE 87 

REGRETTABLE COINCIDENCE 92 

PLACE OF CONTRADICTIONS 97 

NOT FOR THE EFFETE 102 

FUTILE FUN 106 

TIME FOR CANDOR 110 

WHAT A WHIRLIGIG! 114 

THE WRONG ROAD 119 

WATERSPOUTS IN THE SEA 123 

TOUGH GOING 127 

QUESTIONS ANSWERED 131 


FOLDING 

BEDOUINS 















♦ 

















































































So, dear and comfortable reader — hail and farewell! 
















“ NO MORE HOUSE CATS!” 

A casual observer would say that the thing began 
only last night; but as I look back on it I realize 
that the touch-off was down in Texas, months ago. 
The beach at Corpus Christi was lined with tourist 
cabins, with signs on many of them proclaiming 
“ No More Vacancies/' This was noteworthy in 
itself, but when I saw a placard, “No More House 
Cats," I decided that congestion must be extreme. 
Things were certainly crowded when there wasn’t 
even room for another kitten! On investigation, 
however, I discovered that part of the sign had 
been washed away. What it really said was: “ No 
More House Cars” 

Thus began my interest in the motor trailer, 
and for several days I discussed the rosy future of 
this newcomer in the field of transport. Then 
my mind drifted to other matters, and I thought 
no more of homes on wheels. 

Last night we dined at the home of a newspaper 
editor who belongs to the temerarious clan of 
O’Flaherty. Among the guests were an eminent 
globe-trotter and journalist; a famous inventor; 
and a plain but energetic business man. 





2 > Folding Bedouins 

In the course of conversation, the subject of trail¬ 
ers came up, or was brought up by some impish 
spirit. Anyway, it was like a lighted match in a 
bucket of benzine. My consort burst suddenly 



into flame. Half dazed, I was whisked to a neigh¬ 
bor’s house to get a circular about trailers. When 
we returned with it, we found the whole company 
blazing like a prairie fire. With the characteristic 
impetuosity of his tribe the O’Flaherty was on the 
telephone, calling up a dealer in trailers. News¬ 
paper editors, as you must have noticed in the 
movies, work fast. Without a second’s hesitation, 
they can dispatch a man to Ethiopia, or have him 
in a trailer, bound for Florida. 

Desperately, I pointed out that it was late Satur¬ 
day night, and that the trailer-man’s place would 






“ No More House Cats! ” 3 

be closed. Alas, I did not know the nature of the 
trailer business. Not only was the dealer there, 
but he was hot as mustard. In five minutes, all 
arrangements were concluded. 

I now discovered that I had a more venturesome 
wife and daughter than I had supposed. Things 
had moved rapidly, but I thought that I could halt 
them when the speed went too high. Not so. The 
seed I had myself carelessly sown had germinated 
like a sunflower. All my musings on the delights 
of travel by trailer had come back to plague me. 
Never was a man so hoist by his own petard. I 
pleaded. I stormed. I brought up every fearsome 
possibility I could think of, but all to no avail. 
And so, early of a cold and gray Sunday, prodded 
on by my family and marching between two sa¬ 
distic journalists, I was taken to see my fate. 

There were all sorts of variations on the main 
theme in the dealer’s establishment, but my family 
would consent to nothing but the largest. My 
own preference was for something small — some¬ 
thing, indeed, which could be hauled aboard the 
power car, if need be. My preference there was 
consulted no more than any of my other prefer¬ 
ences in the whole business. In a few minutes I 
had signed the papers attaching me to an ambu¬ 
lant house, and the blacksmith was busily at work 
riveting on the hooks. The blows of his sledge 
still echo in my aging heart! 

The financial details were interesting. It ap- 


Folding Bedouins 


4 

pears that you can rent a portable villa, sleeping 
four persons (I will be able to report later whether 
they really sleep or not), for $4 a day. The de 
luxe outfit, considerably larger, costs $2.66 a day 
more. In either case, the rental can be applied 
on the purchase price of $395 or $795. The 
dealer assured me that practically every renter be¬ 
comes so enamored of trailer-travel that purchase 
immediately follows the first trip. As to that, also, 
I shall know more later. 

The place that I shall call home for the next 
month now stands outside the door, the target for 
the gapes of the neighborhood. In and out skip 
my wife and daughter, stevedoring coal, water, 
blankets, linen, cutlery, assorted foodstuffs, and 
enough miscellaneous baggage for the flight of a 
Tartar tribe. They are jubilant at the prospect of 
playing gypsy. They chirrup merrily and clap 
hands at the enterprise of those three fine fellows 
who set the ball rolling last night. 

Who ever said that women were conservative? 

While the labors of embarkation go forward, I 
sit in the house (the stationary one) feeling as 
Lindbergh must have felt just before he started for 
Paris. The telephone rings constantly, with well- 
wishers telling me what happened to a friend who 
once tried trailer-travel. They tell me that this is 
no time to travel, anyway. The roads are washed 
out. The Ohio is rising. There may be hurri¬ 
canes. 


“ No More House Cats! ” 5 

I begin to feel that a place by a hot radiator, lis¬ 
tening to the radio, would be more fun than being 
whipped over icy roads in a covered wagon. There 
is, however, nothing that will save me now. My 
blood may have cooled, but that of my women¬ 
folk has not. And I am putty in their hands. So, 
dear and comfortable reader — hail and farewell. 


ALL THE COMFORTS OF HOME 


This morning, aided by the postman, who saved 
us from beginning our voyage with a knocked-off 
lamppost, and cheered by friends who brought 
assorted canned and bottled goods, we cast off for 
the south. 

During the first hour I got a stiff neck trying to 
see if the trailer was still with us. After that we 
thought no more about it. One dismal augury is, 
therefore, exploded. The trailer isn’t hard to 
handle. Proceeding timidly at first, and acutely 
conscious that our appendage was six inches wider 
than the car, we soon picked up confidence and 
speed. So far, our maximum speed has been sixty 
miles an hour, but I have no doubt that the trailer 
can be hauled nearly as fast as the car can go. But 
I also have no doubt that we shall not try it. 

As we roll through the wintry landscape I have 
time to study the interior of our portable mansion. 
It is a triumph of ingenuity. To one side, in front, 
is a couch which can be expanded into a double 
bed. On the other side is a compartment for what 
are politely called “ facilities.” 

In this compartment is a pump, drawing water 




All the Comforts of Home 7 

from a thirty-gallon tank. On the floor is a drain, 
permitting the use of a shower. For sissies who 
can’t take their baths cold, the recommended 
technique calls for a hot-water bottle, held over 
the head with one hand, while the soaping is done 



with the other. I am assured that this trick has 
been performed by a 300-pound man. Maybe so, 
but for the present we are simply doing without 
baths. 

Amidships of our land-going yacht is a sink, also 
with a pump; underneath, a china cabinet and 
drawers for linen. Opposite are a coal stove for 
heat, and a gasoline range for cooking. So far we 
have been unable to buy the low-test gasoline re¬ 
quired, and have managed on canned heat. 

Aft of the galley is a pair of Pullman seats, with 








8 


Folding Bedouins 


a table between. When it comes time for bed- 
die-by, the combination becomes another double 
bed. 

The trailer is fitted with a double lighting sys¬ 
tem, one set of lights being attached to the battery 
of the hauling car, the other being plugged into 
any outside circuit available. A long cable is sup¬ 
plied for this latter purpose. Electric light, heat 
and cooking are thus possible during halts. 

Numerous windows and an aperture in the roof 
afford ventilation. All openings are provided 
with screens and curtains. And that reminds me 
that I forgot to mention the icebox which holds 
enough ice for three days. 

There are countless drawers and cupboards, and 
a radio aerial. We haven’t yet reached any agree¬ 
ment as to the purpose of these receptacles, and 
one’s spirit is tried by such things as finding his 
pajamas in a drawer with the tire chains and what 
is left of a chocolate cake. But these, of course, 
are trifling vexations, due to inexperience. 

Not altogether true, I find, is the notion that 
travelers in a covered wagon can halt whenever 
they feel like it. The modern concrete highway 
does not encourage roadside stops. They are, in 
fact, illegal. After vainly seeking a wide place in 
the road, we tried a farmyard. This proved un¬ 
satisfactory on two counts: (a) we were nearly 
stalled in its mud; (b) the farmer was actively out 
of sympathy with the idea. The lunching place 


All the Comforts of Home 9 

finally selected was in the heart of a busy town, 
directly in front of the courthouse. 

If the surroundings were not as sylvan as motor 
gypsying is supposed to demand, the halt proved 
a great boost for travel by trailer. Everything was 
fresh and clean, and three people had all they 
could eat for less than a single restaurant tip. The 
meal did, however, lack something in privacy. 
Most of the town gathered to peer through our 
curtained windows and comment freely on the 
nature of persons who would elect to fare so far 
from home in such a conveyance. We felt as in¬ 
sects must feel when being examined under a 
microscope. 

As the sun sank to rest our thoughts turned to 
the problems of landing for the night. There had 
been no sign of the luxurious tourist camps about 
which we had read. Our inquiries elicited only 
sympathy and blank stares. Most of the camps we 
passed were closed. The few that were open were 
dejected collections of unpainted shacks, adrift in 
a sea of mud. It began to seem that the only alter¬ 
native to one of these establishments would be 
the driveway of a coal mine. We tried one, but 
the coal miners objected — after all, they had to 
get their trucks out. Finally, when darkness and 
dismay had overtaken us, we found refuge in the 
back yard of a gas station. 

This stands at the crossing of two main high¬ 
ways, heavily patronized by motor caravans. Prac- 


io 


Folding Bedouins 


tically all of them, it appears, stop at our station 
for gas. Most of the drivers do without cutouts. 
All of them are both conversational and curious. 
Our covered wagon interests them enormously. It 
is plain that we are not going to have a very tran¬ 
quil night. 



TWINGES OF NOSTALGIA 

One thing is sure — there is no monotony to life 
in a trailer. Little things keep you constantly 
amused. If it isn’t forgetting to take the top off 
the smokestack, or hunting for your sock in the 
icebox, there’s some other little domestic detail to 
keep you occupied all through the day. 

The trouble is that one may also be occupied all 
through the night. In theory, you sleep under the 
trees, with nothing but the twitter of birds to dis¬ 
turb your slumbers. In practice, you rest if, when 
and where you can. Last night, after a vain search 
for a suitable retreat, we again had to resort to a 
gas station — this time in the heart of a city in 
Tennessee. 

There being nothing to visit except tobacco 
warehouses, we retired early, hopeful that peace 
would soon settle on the fretful world. It did not 
settle soon. In fact, it did not settle at all. We 
were moored about a yard from an all-night lunch¬ 
room which boasted an all-night radio. A con¬ 
tinuous stream of trucks roared down the main 
street, just athwart our rear window. And all 
through the night the gas station did a lively busi¬ 
ness. Added to those distractions, and the voices 
11 




Folding Bedouins 


of natives, a foot from our ears, in hot discussion 
of our conveyance and our probable characters, 
there was a busy railroad yard only a stone’s throw 
away. 

All this could be endured as a mere passing in¬ 
convenience, for, of course, one is not obliged to 



park in a main-street gas station. There are cross¬ 
roads gas stations. But candor compels me to re¬ 
port that our trailer beds are not as good as the 
best hotel beds. On the other hand, they are bet¬ 
ter than bad hotel beds, and at least we have the 
comfort of knowing who slept in them the night 
before. 

Dressing in a trailer is an art in itself. It is dis¬ 
tinctly on the nudist side, and persons of abnormal 
delicacy might find a trip in a trailer of great psy- 








Twinges of Nostalgia 


*3 

chological benefit. There is nothing like it for 
the removal of inhibitions. It is also beneficial for 
those who have become unduly dependent on crea¬ 
ture comfort. It is true, of course, that our travel¬ 
ing home has more modern conveniences than 
have most of the dwellings we pass on the road. 
But it is also true that when a family eats and 
sleeps and pecks at the typewriter in a space of 
something like ninety square feet, one thinks so¬ 
berly of that adage about two being company and 
three a crowd. 

Only two days out, but I am already convinced 
that travel by trailer is the coming thing. Most 
of the people I question along the road agree with 
me about this. It is equally clear to me, however, 
that the trailer has been developed to a point con¬ 
siderably higher than the facilities for taking care 
of it. I hope the great gas companies are alive to 
their opportunity. A large volume of new busi¬ 
ness awaits them if they will extend their service 
by providing bath and toilet facilities, electric cur¬ 
rent, suitable parking space and commissaries for 
the sale of ice, coal and other supplies. 

In some parts of the country, I am told, this de¬ 
velopment has taken place. I have seen no evi¬ 
dence that anything more than the rudiments of it 
have appeared in Indiana, Kentucky or Tennessee. 
In these regions the trailer is, to a large extent, the 
problem which the horseless carriage was to the 
livery stable. 


Folding Bedouins 


14 

I think it probable that the cheaper hotels will 
feel the competition of the trailer. The trailer is 
certainly the most economical method of travel. 
And its mobility will appeal to many who can af¬ 
ford even the best hotels. They will be willing 
to sacrifice some comfort for the freedom of move¬ 
ment which the traveling house permits. 

However, when I hunt for my razor and find it 
tucked away in the china cabinet with the stove 
lid, and then try to shave in a compartment two 
feet square while my consort uses the pier glass on 
the other side of the door, my thoughts turn long¬ 
ingly to the white-tiled elegance of a hotel bath¬ 
room. Obviously, the years have softened me. I 
have become a Sybarite. I needed this revision of 
standards, this discarding of the nonessential. It is 
undoubtedly good for me, but I can’t help casting 
an envious glance or two as at twilight we flit past 
hotels all aglow with cheerful light, and search for a 
landing field not too close to a switchyard or an all- 
night beanery. 

It is perhaps the vengeance of heaven. To 
think that only a few weeks ago I occupied a suite 
in a Park Avenue hostelry with two tubs and a 
shower — and used none of them! Well, life is 
like that. 



DEVELOPING A TECHNIQUE 

Last night, for a consideration of four bits, a well- 
advertised old gentleman named Uncle Joe let us 
drop anchor in the yard of his Georgia tourist 
camp; and for the first time we slept in a silence 
broken only by the lowing of kine and the crowing 
of cocks. 



Uncle Joe is a student of travel. He began his 
service to the wayfarer with a rooming house. 
Then he tried cabins. For a time the latter went 
begging. “ Seems like people was ashamed of 
15 

















Folding Bedouins 


16 

cabins,” says Uncle Joe. Then the picture 
changed. People took to cabins. Now they come, 
more and more, in trailers. Uncle Joe’s problem 
now is to get enough land for the accommodation 
of house cars. “ There’s a fellow down Macon 
way puts up fifteen or twenty of ’em a night,” he 
says enviously. 

The road begins to show signs of trailer-con¬ 
sciousness. This awakening is definite in Georgia. 
Billboards advertising anchorage for land-going 
yachts become more numerous. Here, for the first 
time, we make the acquaintance of the roadside ice 
dispenser: “ Ice — Day and Night,” his sign pro¬ 
claims. 

Slowly we develop a technique of putting on and 
removing clothes. This involves some compro¬ 
mise with ordinary concepts of privacy, and it 
demands both physical agility and adaptation to 
environment. Only with practice is it possible 
for one to brush one’s teeth in what we playfully 
refer to as our bathroom. To a novice this feat 
would seem difficult if not impossible. However, 
it can be done quite neatly once you get the hang 
of it. You first remove the overshoes and the type¬ 
writer from underfoot, and, if you are the sort of 
person that insists on a surplus of room, the gar¬ 
bage can and the box of stove coal. After this you 
take the sack of tangerines and the bundle of kin¬ 
dling wood from the washbasin, and you are then 
all set for a go at your ivories. First, however, you 


Developing a Technique 17 

must remove toilet implements from the shelf and 
fold the shelf up out of the way. Otherwise you 
would not be able to get your face over the basin. 
Even after folding up the shelf you will find 
your nose to be considerably in the way. You can¬ 
not brush your teeth full on; you have to do it with 
your face sideways. This necessitates projecting 
your legs into the main body of the house and in¬ 
terferes with whomever is trying to use the mirror 
on the other side of the door. The problem is not 
insuperable, however, and working on it helps de¬ 
velop the character. 

While such operations are possible while the 
trailer is in motion, they are not recommended. 
Our daughter prepared an excellent lunch, the 
work including the slicing of tomatoes, while we 
scooted over the landscape at better than fifty miles 
an hour. She did it without cutting herself with 
the bread knife or being bounced off the stove. I 
performed the much lesser feat of typing one of 
these chapters while on the wing. We are agreed, 
however, that cookery and composition are best 
done while we are in port. 

During the first days of this voyage our equip¬ 
ment was the object of extreme curiosity. The 
folk of the frozen north are not familiar with 
houses on wheels. As one proceeds southward, 
however, the trailer becomes a commonplace. 
During this morning’s run we counted a dozen. 
Many of them seemed to be of home manufacture. 


i8 


Folding Bedouins 


All of them were going in the opposite direction. 
This year the “ sunny south ” seems to have been 
a figure of speech. 

These discouraged travelers may have given up 
too soon. The sun shines bright, the grass is green 
and overcoats have disappeared. The sidewalks 
are gay with colorful open-air fruit markets. 
Though we are only half way to our destination, it 
is as much June hereabouts as it is likely to be in 
Miami. Already we are wearing dark glasses and 
have begun to consider the problem of keeping 
cool. 



I begin to think of possible improvements in 
our outfit. One would be telephonic communica¬ 
tion between its two elements. The need for this 
was demonstrated yesterday. One of the party 
















Developing a Technique 19 

wished to withdraw to the trailer for a nap. After 
allowing a reasonable time for her to get aboard, 
we started. The time, however, was not reasonable 
enough. She was not safely aboard, and if we had 
not heard her frantic shouts, we might have rolled 
on for an hour before discovering the shrinkage in 
our crew. 

Things like this keep us entertained. And even 
so commonplace a misadventure as befell us this 
morning — leaving my watch at Uncle Joe’s — is 
considerably magnified when traveling by trailer. 
The oversight was quickly discovered, but turning 
around with a trailer is not easy. It is best to pro¬ 
ceed in a continuing direction. So we went around 
the block. Only it wasn’t a block, and instead of 
finding ourselves back at Uncle Joe’s, we found 
ourselves on the other side of the railroad track, 
with no crossroad in sight. 

All this led to extended discussion of my men¬ 
tality, which filled the time pleasantly until we 
halted for lunch beside the very house where 
Jeeters of Tobacco Road might have lived. The 
contrast made our habitation seem luxurious, in¬ 
deed. 



VARIATION ON AN OLD THEME 

I suppose I could charge it to Mr. Roosevelt’s wife, 
but my wife, supported by our daughter, has a 
simpler explanation. During the afternoon they 
had had a long and (to them) interesting discus¬ 
sion of intelligence. They debated the phenome¬ 
non of persons who were bright in some ways and 
not so bright in others. Their conversation was 
illustrated with reminiscences of the things I had 
done. 

I found it a rather tiresome conversation, and I 
was glad when we came to rest in the Log Cabin 
Camp — “ where good food abounds and fellow¬ 
ship thrills,” W. H. Cunningham, Prop.—an es¬ 
tablishment highly recommended by the Royal 
Cafe, where we had paused for refreshment. Idle 
talk about the frailties of my character had now to 
be superseded by the stern labors of bedding down. 

The electric light circuit into which we were 
supposed to plug being conveniently located at the 
top of a twelve-foot pole, we used the current sup¬ 
plied by our car to provide light for the communal 
undressing. This is an important point, the rea¬ 
sons for which will be apparent later. 

While the ladies were occupied with this task I 


20 







Variation on an Old Theme 21 

sat in the car, improving my mind by listening to a 
discussion of the Youth Movement, presided over 
by Mrs. Roosevelt. It was very interesting and in¬ 
structive, and when it was over I lingered on with 
Ed Wynn, a most comical fellow, at whose antics I 
laughed heartily. When I had had my fill of edi¬ 
fication and entertainment and the trailer no 
longer creaked with the movement of the ladies as 
they made ready for repose, I turned off the radio 
and went back to what we refer to as our little 
home. 

How cozy it all is, I thought, as I entered upon 
my nightly struggle for a fair and decent share of 
the blankets. We were moored in a field well 
off the highway and there was hardly a sound to 
mar the perfect stillness of the night. A soft 
breeze, laden with the scent of near-by pines, 
drifted in through the open windows, and from 
far away came the music of a hound baying at the 
moon. 

On the morrow, refreshed by a good night’s rest, 
we would rise with the sun, warm our peripatetic 
cottage with a brisk fire of pine knots, drink some 
delicious coffee and be on our way to the land of 
the orange and the realtor while less fortunate 
mortals were ringing for the porter to fetch their 
satchels to a taxi. Dreaming thus, I fell asleep. 

Next morning the first thing I learned was that 
we were now on eastern time, and so an hour be¬ 
hind schedule. The next thing I learned was that 


Folding Bedouins 


22 

pine knots burn with an aromatic but dense and 
pitchy smoke, especially when one has forgotten 
to open the damper. Several other things hap¬ 
pened. The lid lifter had disappeared somewhere 
among the cutlery. I dropped the hot stovelid on 
my bare toes, and then burned my fingers trying to 
pick it up with a pair of pliers. Also the cream 
was sour, and the cookstove had run out of gas. 

These, however, were trifles — of no conse¬ 
quence to such seasoned campers as we had be¬ 
come. We passed them off with jolly quip and 
jest, in the true spirit of the pioneer. Feasting on 
bread and water, we made things shipshape and 
stowed ourselves in the motorcar, ready for an¬ 
other lap on our race to reach Florida before snow 
flew. 

And here, friends, is where Mrs. Roosevelt 
comes in! I had been so hypnotized by her dulcet 
voice that I had forgotten to turn out the lights. 
As shown by the electric clock, the exhausted bat¬ 
tery had died at exactly 4:46 a.m. 

There I was in the middle of a field, with two 
helpless women and a deceased battery. Things 
looked dark indeed. But hold! Back into the 
story comes Mr. Cunningham, riding on a truck 
with his friend, Dick Reeves. A search of the 
Cunningham heirlooms produced a piece of chain, 
and, with all hands heaving, we managed to get 
our combined rolling stock into a ditch from 
which not even the truck could get it out. 


Variation on an Old Theme 23 

Things now looked even darker. It was clear 
that for one thing we must make our first attempt 
at unhitching the trailer. The instruction book 
says this can be done easily in a minute or two. 
Maybe so, but when you can’t find the jack and 
are mired in a swamp it takes longer. 

Well, we finally got unhooked, and in a shower 
of mud from the spinning wheels of Mr. Cunning¬ 
ham’s truck reached solid ground. Then, after a 
tow of a few miles, our engine came to life, and 
we were ready to move on. 



The bill for our stay at Log Cabin Camp was 
25 cents. The services of Mr. Cunningham and 
Mr. Reeves were gratis. It was with great diffi¬ 
culty that I prevailed on them to accept a small 
recompense for our mutilation of the camp 










Folding Bedouins 


*4 

grounds. Anyone who doubts the reality of south¬ 
ern hospitality is invited to communicate with me. 

And now, as we bowl along again, my women 
folk have resumed the theme of yesterday. With 
complete absence of conjugal loyalty or filial piety, 
they sink even to the use of such words as “ bone- 
head." 

I sit in dignified silence, cracking pecans and 
thinking of Mrs. Roosevelt. 



NOT ALL PLAY 

Last evening we gave some friends of ours in 
St. Petersburg, Florida, a shock by dropping in 
for dinner. It was apparently the first time a 
trailer had ever appeared on their quiet street, and 
all the children of the neighborhood gathered to 
gape while the “ folding Bedouins/’ as Eugene 
Field prophetically described us, changed into civi¬ 
lized clothes. 

It was a rare treat to sit at ease in a dining room 
that seemed as large as a cathedral, and which 
neither swayed nor creaked. Our friends urged us 
to spend the night with them, but if there was any 
weakness of spirit in our crew, it was in the mi¬ 
nority. Resisting the temptation of real beds, we 
repaired to the All States Tourist Camp, an estab¬ 
lishment on the outskirts of the city, covering sev¬ 
eral acres. There we found no fewer than seventy- 
nine trailers already in residence. Ours took the 
last space available. 

For sixty cents, paid in advance, we had access 
to electricity, with our own meter, free garbage 
collection, hot water, toilet facilities, and a variety 
of entertainment, ranging from lectures on the 
Townsend plan to shuffleboard and bridge tour- 
25 




Folding Bedouins 


26 

naments, with handsome prizes donated by the 
management. There were also a well-equipped 
filling station and a general store. 

Few of those enjoying the facilities of this ex¬ 
traordinary place were transients like ourselves — 
here tonight and gone tomorrow. The others 
were there for long stays. Some had even achieved 
such a degree of permanence as to have flower beds 
around their trailers. Many had screened porches, 
or sat outdoors at tables with colored parasols over 
them. These partial nomads paid from to $3 
a week for the choicer parking lots on the shore. 

Morning in a trailer camp is a busy time. Papa, 
in his old sweater and well-worn pants, scurries 
about building fires and fetching water, while 
mamma cooks the breakfast, washes the dishes and 
hangs out the laundry. Children and dogs frisk 
everywhere, and the smell of bacon and coffee and 
hot suds mingles with the scent from near-by 
orange groves. 

The people are a friendly lot, eager to learn all 
about you, and no less eager to tell all about them¬ 
selves. One is reminded of life on shipboard. 
Reserve quickly melts, and the fact that one man’s 
car carries license plates from the same state as 
that of his neighbor is sufficient ground for im¬ 
mediate intimacy. 

Hotel proprietors look with jaundiced eyes 
upon the growing vogue of the house car. They 
consider it a threat to their existence. I am in¬ 
clined to believe, however, that their fears are 


Not All Play 27 

exaggerated. The trailer will not destroy the 
hotel business. What it will do, I think, is raise 
the standard of hotel-keeping, and therefore be of 
benefit to the good hotels. 



People who can afford to patronize hotels and 
restaurants of the first class are not likely to travel 
by trailer except in those remote regions where 
good stopping places are rare. Any general use 
of trailers will be confined to that large element 
of the population whose incomes have hitherto 
either prohibited any travel at all, or have necessi¬ 
tated the endurance of inferior hotel accommoda¬ 
tions. The net effect of the trailer, therefore, will 
be to stimulate travel, to create new markets for 
all who cater to the tourist, and to make life harder 
for the sort of tavern and eating place whose only 
appeal is on a basis of price. 







28 


Folding Bedouins 


In my opinion, after a week of trailer life, the 
only hotel that will really be hurt by the trailer is 
the sort of hotel that has no excuse for existence, 
anyway. 

Life in a trailer is not all play — especially for 
the women. Food and ice and necessary supplies 
are not always easily accessible. They can't be 
ordered by telephone and conveniently delivered 
to the back door. Fires must be built and ashes 
disposed of. Toilet arrangements constitute a 
special problem. Electric light is not always avail¬ 
able and oil lamps must be cleaned. Foodstuffs 
must be bought in small quantities because the 
space for their storage is rigorously limited. And 
the labors of cooking, dishwashing, garbage dis¬ 
posal, laundering, bed-making and the care of 
clothes are considerably more arduous than they 
are at home. 

A trip in a trailer is only a partial vacation for 
the housewife. I suspect that in more than one of 
the house cars that pass us on the road, homeward 
bound, is a woman whose heart sings at the pros¬ 
pect of return to gas ranges, electric refrigerators 
and hot running water. Papa may be sad at get¬ 
ting back to the dull monotony of store or office, 
but to mamma there must be a new sweetness in 
the refrain of Home, Sweet Home. So, one way or 
another, the trailer is a blessing. Even if it does no 
more than increase the charm of home, its contri¬ 
bution to human happiness is great. 



FIGURING THE COST 

Anyone figuring on a motor trip south will do 
well to take into account the cost of toll bridges 
and ferries. On this voyage of ours we have thus 
far spent for getting over rivers and other bodies 
of water, almost half as much as we have spent for 
oil and gas. 

It cost $1.25 to get into St. Petersburg, via the 
Gandy bridge, and $5.60 to get out, via the Braden- 
town ferry. Both of these charges could, of course, 
have been avoided, but only at the expense of many 
extra miles on the road. 

The island of Captiva, on which we have at last 
come to rest, is a bit of shell reef lying nearly four 
miles off Fort Myers, on the west coast. Its only 
means of transport to the mainland is the ferry. 
There are no telephones, and, according to the 
promotional literature of its leading hotel, the 
chief diversions are the sunsets and the variety of 
the sea shells along its shore. 

It is said to have got its name from its use by the 
pirate, Gasparilla, as a storage place for his pris¬ 
oners. Few visitors come here — certainly not 
many trailers. After the job of getting ours on the 
ferry, I found it easy to understand why few trail- 
29 





Folding Bedouins 


30 

ers have ever come this way. And after jolting for 
fifteen miles over the washboard road from the 
ferry landing to our final anchorage, I began to 
suspect that even though an occasional trailer may 
stray this far, it is problematical if it will ever get 
back to tell the tale. There are moments when 
the uneasy feeling assails me that we are here for 
good. 

Now that we are, in a manner of speaking, set¬ 
tled down, it may be in order to spend a few leisure 
minutes in examination of the account book. 

The speedometer shows us to be 1,414 miles 
from home. To cover this distance we used 104 
gallons of gas, at an average cost of slightly over 
twenty-three cents a gallon. We averaged 13.6 
miles to the gallon, or about eleven per cent more 
gas than the normal of our car for extended trips. 
(The car is a 6 cylinder Oldsmobile coach.) The 
trailer, therefore, does not require nearly as much 
power as its bulk would suggest. 

The smallest item of expense on this trip was 
that for landing fields. The total for five nights 
was $1.60; the price range from nothing to sixty 
cents. 

Bridge and ferry tolls came to $9, with $6.61 
for “ miscellaneous ” — that catchall covering ev¬ 
erything from a couple of movies to a thank-offer¬ 
ing for being towed out of innocuous desuetude 
when our battery expired. 

We spent $10.80 for food and household sup- 


Figuring the Cost 31 

plies, including fuel for both stoves, and $9.75 
went to restaurants for meals we took outside. 
The total cost of food and accessories for three per¬ 
sons for six days was $30.55. No small part of this 
total, it may be said, constitutes a capital invest¬ 
ment. That is, it went for permanent equipment. 

It is obvious that we have not traveled by trailer 
as cheaply as it can be done. In the first place, our 
outfit is rented, and it is a de luxe outfit. In the 



second place, we dined out every evening. Our 
trip has therefore cost just about what it would 
have cost had we traveled by car and stayed in small 
hotels (figuring $6.50 a day for rooms), and eating 
in the more modest beaneries. 

If, however, we owned our trailer, the story 
would be different. Assuming its cost to be $ 1,000 






Folding Bedouins 


3 * 

(this is high, for an outfit practically as good as 
ours can be had for a trifle over $400), the interest, 
depreciation and maintenance charges would 
come to not over one dollar a day. On such a 
basis the cost of taking three people to Florida by 
trailer would be less than half the cost of taking 
them by any other means. Once on the ground, 
people can live in a trailer for only a small fraction 
of what it would cost to live in even the cheapest 
of hotels or boarding houses. And as far as the 
quality of the victuals is concerned, people can cer¬ 
tainly live much better. 

In all these comparisons of the trailer with other 
forms of transport and habitation, it is important 
that the same standards of measurement be used. 
It is simple idiocy to compare the best of trailers 
with a compartment on the Dixie Flyer and a suite 
at the Breakers. The trailer is not, and I doubt if 
it ever will be, a substitute for fast trains and first- 
class hotels. On the other hand, there can be no 
question that it is a distinct improvement on the 
sort of accommodations hitherto available to peo¬ 
ple with slender purses. 

And now to collect sea shells and look at the 
sunset. . . . 



UNWELCOME GUESTS 

It is slowly becoming apparent even to our 
blunted sensibilities that in almost any place ex¬ 
cept those which cater to them as a business, trail¬ 
ers are about as popular as a well-defined case of 
leprosy. 

Everyone here has asked us how we got our 
trailer across on the ferry. There seems to be 
general mystification at our getting over. We 
have only just discovered the reason for the unh 
versal surprise. It appears that the skipper of the 
ferryboat. Captain Leon Crumpler, has an active 
distaste for trailers. He all but refuses to carry 
them. Fortunately for us, however, one of the 
other customers objected to having our trailer on 
board. He was afraid it would sink the boat. This 
so outraged the skipper’s professional pride that it 
overcame his animosity for trailers. 

When we began planning to visit this place we 
arranged to stay at the hotel. It was our thought 
that we should doze through the long afternoons, 
forgetful of the world as we listened to the whisper 
of the waves and feasted on a variety of succulent 
fish. Near the hotel, as we understood it, was the 


33 




34 


Folding Bedouins 


home of a friend, who lives on Captiva because of 
its almost complete isolation from tourists. 

When we arrived, dragging our semi-detached 
villa behind us, our friend came out to extend the 
greeting of the community. He looked more than 



a little bewildered by what he saw, and there was 
something hollow in the laugh with which he asked 
where the elephants were. We had wired him that 
we were arriving by trailer, but, as we see now, 
there can be no real preparation for trailers. They 
are like earthquakes. You can read about them 
and see them in the movies, but until you have ac¬ 
tually experienced one — had it draw up at your 
front door — its full possibilities cannot be 
grasped. 

Our friends arrangements for taking care of it 








Unwelcome Guests 35 

collapsed when he saw it. New arrangements had 
to be made. We could not settle directly on the 
beach, because, if we did, we could never get away. 
Obviously, no one wanted to consider that hideous 
possibility. It was equally obvious that we could 
not get into the jungle. By a process of elimina¬ 
tion we reached the only possible parking place — 
the lawn in front of our friend’s house. 

Our choice of site was complicated by the fact 
that it really wasn’t our friend’s lawn. He rented 
it from a retired sea captain, who lived next door. 
The latter was complacent, however, and accepted 
the demolition of his shrubbery with the philo¬ 
sophic resignation of a man who has learned that 
there is no end to surprises. 

So here we are, as conspicuous and as difficult of 
disposal as a stranded whale. We are more pestif¬ 
erous than if we had actually invaded the repose 
of our friend as uninvited house guests. Then we 
could at least have been stowed away out of sight. 
As it is we are the most prominent feature of the 
landscape. There are no overt acts, but we can 
easily imagine the feelings of the people whose 
view of the sea we have so successfully obstructed. 
It is not difficult to put ourselves in their places 
and imagine our emotions if a trailer full of stran¬ 
gers suddenly rolled up to drop anchor on our 
front yard. 

Occasionally one of the neighbors stops to in¬ 
quire if we need butter or ice, or merely to watch 


Folding Bedouins 


36 

as we busy ourselves adding to the scenery by 
hanging up a colorful array of wet bathing suits. 
I can see them wince when we comment enthusi¬ 
astically on the beauty of the sky or the pleasant 
softness of the breeze from the gulf. It is obvious 
that they fear we may be so captivated by Captiva 
that we will stay on indefinitely. I suspect that 
they go home to pray for a stiff norther — even a 
hurricane. Fortunately for them it has been a 
rainy winter, and there is an abnormal number of 
mosquitoes to mar an otherwise charming sym¬ 
phony of nature. One of these days we shall pull 
up anchor and leave the shells and the sunsets for 
some tourist camp where we can be among our 
own kind. 

We toy with the whimsical thought of invading 
Palm Beach. Like the nomads of Attila, the Hun, 
we would roll down from the west, devastating that 
sanctuary of sophistication and convention. There 
is probably no place in the world where a trailer 
would find a chillier welcome than in that shel¬ 
tered retreat of the very rich. I can picture the 
consternation of a Palm Beach butler at seeing one 
of these movable houses unhitch in one of the ex¬ 
clusive demesnes, smoke from its stove drifting up 
the royal palms and its washing hanging out be¬ 
hind. 

We shall be pariahs there, of course. But it is 
clear now that we are pariahs everywhere, except 
in the tourist camps. Strangers in white flannels 


Unwelcome Guests 


37 

and panama hats will stare at us icily, and our 
friends will be patiently polite, hopeful that if they 
speak softly and do nothing to annoy us we shall 
soon yield again to the wanderlust and be on our 
way to somebody else’s lawn. 

The trailer is such a new thing that people are 
not yet armed against it. It takes them by sur¬ 
prise. It overpowers them. A man may fancy that 
his home is his castle, but let a trailer appear and 
his stronghold is like Rome before the Goths. I 
think I shall fly the Jolly Roger from the smoke¬ 
stack of our trailer. I begin to feel like Gasparilla 
himself. Captiva has fallen. Not even Palm 
Beach can stand against us. 



EATING AND BEING EATEN 

To the Master of the Show there must be some¬ 
thing at once pathetic and ridiculous in man’s ego¬ 
istic assumption that he is the only pebble on the 
beach. It is so plain that man is only one form of 
life; a relatively new form, too, and perhaps not 
permanent. 

Captiva is a primitive place. There is no golf, 
no tennis, no telephone, and, except for an occa¬ 
sional private generating plant, no electricity. 
One is remote from most of the things that consti¬ 
tute what we call civilization. Four miles of 
water and a road that is worse than anything on a 
motorcar manufacturer’s proving ground, keep 
this island in the state of isolation that its inhabit¬ 
ants like. Save for the fishing — which in season 
is ranked with the world’s best — there is nothing 
much for the visitor to do but drift in and out of 
the sea and meander up and down the beach. 

A stroll on the beach is disturbing to the vanity. 
In the first place, it isn’t properly a beach at all. 
What sand there is isn’t really sand, but pulverized 
sea shells. The island itself is one mass of shells. 
And it makes one feel singularly small and incon¬ 
sequential to reflect that every one of these innu- 
38 





Eating and Being Eaten 39 

merable shells was once the habitation of a living 
creature. 

Sooner or later one takes to collecting shells. 
We have been here only a few days, but already our 
trailer begins to resemble a museum of marine life. 



We have picked up the jargon of the shell fanciers 
and speak knowingly of pelecypoda and gastero¬ 
poda,, which, as you may or may not know, are the 
mollusca — the bivalves and the univalves; the 
shells with two parts, and the shells with only one. 

We wander along the shore, chirruping hap¬ 
pily as we stumble upon the homes of such quaintly 
named creatures as Keyhole Limpet, Bleeding 
Tooth, Tiger’s Eye, Lady’s Ear, Scotch Bonnet 
and Noah’s Ark. (Some of these shells are prob¬ 
ably not found here; but if they aren’t, they should 






Folding Bedouins 


40 

be.) At first all the shells look alike. Presently 
you begin to see differences in shape, structure, 
fineness of texture, material and color. The more 
you look the greater the range of variety. And 
the show changes with each shift in the wind, with 
each fall in the tide, as new examples are brought 
on the stage, and the dead actors are washed back 
into the sea. 

A neighbor of ours — Edward P. Burch, a con¬ 
sulting engineer from Minneapolis — has gone 
scientifically at the work of collecting shells, and 
has already acquired what I am told is a note¬ 
worthy assortment. I sat with him among his pans 
and buckets this afternoon and watched him feed 
bits of mullet to what looked like a piece of old 
mop. It seemed to like the victuals and opened 
what was apparently its mouth for more. A curi¬ 
ous creature, this — a shellfish without a shell, its 
only protection seeming to be its repulsive appear¬ 
ance. 

Poking about this way, peering under the sur¬ 
face of nature, one comes to have an indulgent 
smile for the earnest sentimentalists who talk about 
“peace.” There is no peace in nature. Every 
form of life preys on some other form, and there is 
no device of protective armament so ingenious that 
some form of attack has not been developed to 
overcome it. One would think that the mollusks, 
of all creatures, were safe behind their granite 
walls, but there are other mollusks equipped with 


Eating and Being Eaten 41 

filelike tongues which can drill quickly through 
the hardest stone. What is more, these invaders 
are a form of automatic machinery. They attach 
themselves to their victims, and wait patiently 
while the movement of the water does the work. 
Anyone who has ever pried open the shell of an 
oyster would be humiliated by the ease with which 
the starfish does it. He wraps himself around the 
shell, fixes his vacuum-cup feelers to it, puts on the 
power, and presto! the doors of the oyster’s castle 
swing open as if they were on ball-bearing hinges. 

Coming up from the beach I paused to gape at 
the sight of a palmetto, like Laocoon among the 
serpents, twisted and tortured in the strangling 
arms of a rubber plant. Life seems to be largely a 
business of eating and being eaten. And I might 
add that, at this moment, that singing sadist, the 
mosquito, seems to have lost all sense of ordinary 
sportsmanship. He seems to think that life is ex¬ 
clusively a business of eating. Either he will die 
of indigestion or I shall run out of blood for him 
to drink. 



TALL TALE 

The sun, with tropic abruptness, had disappeared 
in the direction of Mexico, and our beach gleamed 
in the moonlight like polished silver. We sat in 
the after cabin, or deckhouse, of the trailer, and 
our friend, the Ancient Mariner, his weather¬ 
beaten face buried in a beaker of Carioca rum, 
was in a mood for reminiscence. Ordinarily a taci¬ 
turn man, as are all those who follow the sea, his 
tongue had loosened under the benevolent impact 
of the New Orleans nectar, and he spun one yarn 
after another — of the skulls and bones of buried 
pirates, of Spanish doubloons, and of horrendous 
monsters of the deep. Finally he told of what had 
befallen him in a recent hurricane. 

When the storm first struck the captain’s house 
the building slid off its foundation posts and wan¬ 
dered down to the bay, demolishing a smokehouse 
and a twelve-foot skiff in its path. The captain and 
his two cats were in the house at the time. When 
the gust subsided, after about forty minutes, the 
captain picked himself up from the floor, where he 
had been knocked by a flying shutter, and went 
outside to investigate. A flat calm had ensued and 
his house was thirty yards out in the mud, lodged 

42 






Tall Tale 43 

against an old fender piling, where three feet of 
water had been only a few minutes before. 

The captain paused for a meditative sip of rum. 
“ I knew it was the center of the storm passing 
over, ,, he continued, 44 and I says to myself that if 
the house could navigate herself out there, I reck¬ 
oned I could navigate her back when the wind 
changed.” 

With the remnants of an awning for sail, a six¬ 
teen-foot poling oar for a tiller, and two kedge 
anchors to brake her, the captain was ready when 
the wind returned from the opposite direction. 
The return voyage was a complete success, except 
that a slight error in the calculation for the length 
of one of the anchor ropes caused the house to 
rotate. It came to rest squarely on its foundation 
posts, but was completely turned around. 

“ And I want to tell you,” said the captain, with 
a hunted look in his eye, “ the thing is running 
me plumb crazy! ” 

Refreshing himself from his goblet, the old 
mariner went on. “ Yes, sir, it’s running me 
crazy. A man as old as I am- don't belong to have 
the points of the compass switched on him that 
way. The front door is in back and the back door 
is in front. When I go out to get me a gourd of 
water from the sink, I fetch up at the old lard can 
with a dipper full of grit. When I step outside 
to see how the skiff is riding, I like to fracture my 
skull against a sea-grape tree, and when I go to get 


Folding Bedouins 


44 

me an armload of stove wood, like as not I’m knee 
deep in the bay before I can get my bearings. 

“ Even the cats don’t like it. They sleep all 
night and prowl in the daytime. And how can 
you blame them when the sun sets in the east about 
6 a.m., and rises in the west along about bedtime? 
If another blow don’t come pretty soon so I can 
bring her about and anchor proper, I reckon I’ll be 
fitten to be tied.” 



There is nothing, I suppose, that can be done 
about hurricanes. Like earthquakes and floods 
and volcanoes and avalanches, they remain largely 
beyond human control. But insects are another 
matter. 

Life near the equator has hitherto been uncom¬ 
fortable, if not impossible, for the white members 





Tall Tale 45 

of the human race. They have been obliged to 
seek homes in the obviously less desirable regions 
of the north. Now, however, science is making 
possible a return to sunshine and warmth and the 
most fecund soil. The mosquito has been con¬ 
quered. In Cuba, for example, people live largely 
without screens at their windows. The time may 
not be far distant when man will forsake the wintry 
north, with its short seasons of grudging fertility 
and the endless labors of keeping warm, and will 
return to the easy comfort of the equatorial belt 
from which he probably started. 

With insects controlled, if not eliminated, and 
with buildings air-conditioned, existence in the 
tropics would be far more agreeable than it is in 
what are facetiously called the temperate zones. 
The time may come when the abandoned subdi¬ 
visions of Florida will bloom again, while cities 
of the north will be abandoned to the coyote and 
the prairie dog. 

Though all this, as the Ancient Mariner points 
out, is dependent on the assumption that man is a 
reasoning being. 



“ ’TWEEN WHEELS ” 

One who spends most of his time in cities for¬ 
gets how densely populated the world is with crea¬ 
tures other than of the human species. It is not 
until man takes up residence in the tropics that 
he realizes how numerous and how proficient in 
attack and defense are the forms of life competing 
with him for existence. 

Many of these creatures, such as the alligator 
and the wildcat, are hidden away in the swampy 
jungles. Others, like the barracuda and the sting 
ray, spend most of their time in the cold, still 
depths of the sea. A vast assortment of life, half 
plant, half animal, is buried in the wet ooze of the 
shore. Still another is not even visible to the naked 
eye. But in relatively plain sight are the snakes, 
the spiders, the scorpions, the centipedes, the rats, 
the roaches and the mosquitoes. With the excep¬ 
tion of the last named — that saber-toothed tiger 
of the air — the enemies and competitors of man¬ 
kind are seen only often enough to provide a re¬ 
minder of their busy existence. They fear man no 
less than he fears them, and are quick to hide at his 
approach. Only by accident do the contenders 

46 





“ ’Tween Wheels ” 47 

meet, and only the mosquito makes unprovoked 
attack. 

The life of this island runs a strange gamut, 
from the single-celled protoplasm of the beach to 
the last sophistication of the human intellect. A 
few yards from where we ride at anchor under the 
palmettos, an internationally famed critic sits be¬ 
hind screens, toiling at his monumental history 



of American art. Next door lives a well-known 
author of books for boys. He lives in solitary state, 
as good a cook and housekeeper as he is a writer, 
keeping his larder largely filled with the fish he 
catches from his own sloop, and occasionally going 
off on long cruises in the open sea. A traveler, as 
well acquainted with Tahiti and the antipodes as 
he is with the Parisian haunts of the gourmet, he 







Folding Bedouins 


prefers this spot to any he has visited. Here, he 
says, nature smiles, living is cheap, the companion¬ 
ship is lively and puttering has been raised to the 
plane of a fine art. 

The click of the typewriter is heard hereabouts 
almost as much as the creak of tackle against a cleat, 
the hum of a reel or the hunting song of the mos¬ 
quito. 

The contrast between the primitive and the 
sophisticated extends to the little establishment, 
half hotel, half guest-house, where we take refuge 
occasionally from camp life and luxuriate in a 
feast of oysters and red snapper. It is a small place, 
accommodating only thirty patrons, but appar¬ 
ently is always full. 

The name of this tranquil retreat from the 
gaudy life of mainland resorts is “ Tween Wa¬ 
ters ” — so called from its situation only a pebble’s 
throw from the gulf on one side and the bay on the 
other. Inspired by this nomenclature, the friend 
whose front yard we have desecrated with our 
traveling incubus calls his cottage “ Tween 
Drinks.” We have followed suit by naming our 
ambulant abode “ ’Tween Wheels.” 

This afternoon we are celebrating our discovery 
of Captiva by serving tea and whatever other bev¬ 
erages can be found, aboard our terrestrial yacht. 
This party should establish a new record for con¬ 
gestion, but it should be a huge success. People 
are tremendously interested in trailers. We have 


“ ’Tween Wheels ” 49 

already received a handsome cash offer for ours. 
We declined it with scorn. Maybe, if it is repeated 
a couple of weeks hence, we shall not decline it so 
scornfully. Perhaps, at that time, life in a fixed 
abode will be more appealing. 



ON THE ROAD AGAIN 

Among the guests at our party aboard the lugger 
last night was an old sea captain — in his eighties 
now and taking his ease in his house on Captiva, 
but as spry and hearty a sea dog as when he skip¬ 
pered the Ventura and made the Union Jack dip 
in the humiliation of defeat. 

It was a commentary on the march of time that 
this grizzled old deep-sea sailor should find himself 
sitting in the cabin of an automobile trailer, an¬ 
chored on his own front lawn. I asked him for 
comments on the situation, but all he would say 
was that he found it “ very interesting.” I suspect 
that, out of earshot of the ladies, he said other 
things. But the captain is a gentleman of the old 
school. He does not use fo’c’sle language on the 
quarter-deck. 

As an incidental bit of information about this 
farewell party of ours, there were no fewer than 
seventeen persons aboard the trailer at one time. 
Our covered wagon is a sturdy craft. 

There are moments when I feel that instead of 
idling among the shells I should be studying eco¬ 
nomic conditions. But it seems to me that eco¬ 
nomic “ conditions ” don’t alter much. A large 
50 





On the Road Again 51 

part of the human race is occupied normally at 
hard and more or less painful labor, under a vari¬ 
ety of unpleasant conditions, and satisfied to get 
out of it just a bare living. 



Most of the permanent residents of these islands 
gain their bread by fishing. They are remote from 
the ordinary concerns of the world. Politics does 
not interest them; and, because they have only a 
handful of votes, politics is not interested in them. 
They have neither time, facilities nor inclination 
to “ keep up ” with the news. They see no papers, 
have no radios. Yet they are content. They seem 
to enjoy their long solitary vigils with line and net. 
It is doubtful if they would care much for a factory 
job, even with movies every night. 

This morning we stowed away the pots and pans, 




Folding Bedouins 


5^ 

took a few hasty, last-minute snapshots, said fare¬ 
well to our Captiva friends and took to the road 
again. There was some question as to whether the 
tide would permit embarkation on the ferry, and 
there were signs in the sky of a coming squall, but 
all went merry as a marriage bell, and we reached 
the mainland with no displeasing incident save the 
extraction of the $3.70 which the skipper of the 
ferry charged for taking us across the bay. 

In Fort Myers, however, trouble assailed us. 
After a serene drive past odoriferous orange groves 
and the estate where Thomas Edison tried vainly 
to grow rubber, we found no landing field avail¬ 
able. We drove three miles out to a camp which 
had been recommended, but found it an establish¬ 
ment of tourist cabins, with neither room nor wel¬ 
come for trailers. So round and round we rolled, 
looking for a place to light and feeling that nobody 
loves fat men or house cars. 

At last, when we were just beginning to feel 
really discouraged and to regret that we had ever 
been tempted into travel by trailer, we found a 
small tourist camp with a field in which we could 
cast anchor and a proprietor who had been a 
Y. M. C. A. secretary. There were no toilet facili¬ 
ties, however, except those in the cabins. So, as the 
weaker members of the party yearned for hot run¬ 
ning water, we weakened in our resolution, and, in 
a burst of extravagance, planked down two dollars 
for a cabin. In it is a neatly furnished bedroom 


On the Road Again 53 

with a kitchen attached. The latter does not inter¬ 
est us very much, for, after all, we have a kitchen. 
But there is also a shower, which interests all of us 
enormously. It is, in fact, the most interesting 
thing we have found on our travels. 

We shall probably stay on here for several days, 
occupied with nothing but the study of economic 
conditions — and the taking of baths. Don’t mis¬ 
understand me. One can take baths in the trailer. 
But a cold shower in a two-foot compartment, the 
space being shared with other “ facilities/’ is amus¬ 
ing only the first time. After that one yearns for 
more heat and more commodiousness. 



POOR MAN’S PARADISE 


The principal industry of Florida is what the 
French call tourisme. To be sure, the land grows 
citrus fruits and celery, and the breeding of cattle 
is an industry which increases in importance. But 
the chief article of export is climate, and hospital¬ 
ity is the box in which it is packed. The visitor 



can do no wrong in Florida. On the streets of this 
drowsy town, for example, the parking signs read: 
“ Local cars one hour.” Cars with foreign license 
plates may stay as long as they like. 


54 










Poor Man’s Paradise 55 

Despite weather unprecedentedly cold and dis¬ 
agreeable, Florida has been jammed this winter. 
Even now, with spring in the air and northward- 
bound cars predominating on the highways, the 
sidewalks are thronged and the cash registers jingle 
merrily in the open-front stores. The astonishing 
thing about the popularity of Florida is that it has 
been achieved in spite of nature no less than be¬ 
cause of it. Florida is long on balmy air and sun¬ 
shine, but it is singularly short on natural beauty. 
Of what may be called scenery there is woefully 
little. The spots with pictorial charm are largely 
artificial. The untouched landscape is a flat and 
tiresome waste of sand, weeds, scrub pine and that 
most uninteresting of trees, the palmetto. 

In winter, at least, the Florida landscape is with¬ 
out color. The green of the foliage is mixed with 
a dusty gray. Even the water of the sea has a 
leaden cast, and the skies, at their brightest, fall 
far short of the turquoise magnificence that one 
finds in Arizona. It is not surprising that few 
painters have found anything in the Florida land¬ 
scape to intrigue them. 

With much of its population transient, and an¬ 
other large part essentially parasitic, the political 
life of Florida is on a low plane. I am told that 
the corruption of Florida municipalities outdoes 
anything discoverable in the rest of the land. In 
certain spots, at least, gambling is recognized as a 
proper diversion of the gentry, and those insects 


Folding Bedouins 


56 

of the underworld who are to be found buzzing 
wherever money abounds are allowed a relatively 
free hand in their operations. Here is the happy 
hunting ground of every variety of leech, from the 
primitive con-man to the adventurer with a title. 

The whole state is a glorified playground, and 
whether one comes in a second-hand trailer or in 
a Long Island houseboat, laden with champagne, 
he finds himself royally welcome. Your taste may 
be for shuffleboard or for roulette, but in either 
case you will find it gratified. There is, literally, 
something for everybody. If your purse and your 
inclination limit you to sitting on a park bench, 
listening to a free band concert or a lecture on the 
Townsend plan, you can be just as happy in St. 
Petersburg as can the millionaire, shooting the 
works at the races in Miami or pursuing sailfish off 
Palm Beach. 

There is no provision for paupers, and I have 
yet to see beggary on Florida streets. I suspect that 
Florida has effective means of discouraging those 
with no money at all. However, for those with 
some ready cash, no matter how little, there is a 
place with a welcome. Those not too well heeled 
can live very cheaply, wear their old clothes and do 
as they please, with plenty of their own kind for 
company. And when they return to the harder 
north they will be the better for the sunshine they 
have soaked up. 

Probably, when human society gets around to 


Poor Man’s Paradise 


57 

being realistic about things, it will discover that all 
work and no play makes Jack not only a dull boy 
but a social liability. The cost of taking care of 
people who get no vacations is undoubtedly great. 
The nation would save money by requiring every 
citizen to take several weeks off each year, living 
largely on fruit and lying in shorts on the Florida 
sands. What such free vacations would cost the 
community would be much less than what the com¬ 
munity now spends to take care of the tired, the 
ailing and the bored. Pending the arrival of that 
day of sweet reasonableness, the state of Florida is 
already doing a good job of making the poor man’s 
vacation dollar roll a long way. Food and lodging 
are cheap, and most of his entertainment is free. 



LETTERS FROM HOME 

So far, this has been what even a purist would be 
justified in calling a lousy day. It began early — 
just when dawn was breaking in the eastern sky. 
At that moment, an important element in my bed 
gave way. Then, as I was pumping up the gasoline 
stove, a seam started in the tank, thus ending all 
prospects of morning coffee. To complete the dis¬ 
mal picture, the famous Florida sunshine gave 
place to a chilly rain. And now, adding a frame to 
my distaste for the things of this world, letters from 
home have caught up with me. 

They bring assorted discomfitures. There is a 
curt note from my bank, regarding an error in my 
arithmetic. The county treasurer threatens dire 
consequences if I don’t pay my taxes. There are 
bills, more or less unexpected. Worst of all, there 
are letters from readers. They engulf me in dark 
brown billows of biliousness! 

I am, at this moment, fed up on the human race 
— or that part of it which takes pen in hand to tell 
me what I should and should not do. 

At General Delivery, this morning, I was handed 
a pile of assorted vituperation. There was a neatly 
typed letter on a piece of engraved stationery, de¬ 
manding my transfer to a concentration camp for 
58 





Letters from Home 


59 

having blasphemed the gods of capitalism. Next 
to it was a missive, scribbled in pencil, retching at 
my supine adherence to privilege. There was a 
blast from a prohibitionist, reviling me because I 
have a taste for beer. There were protests from 
various special interests, complaining at inaccurate 
and superficial treatment of their specialties. 
Typical of these was a letter from a manufacturer 
of trailers, who was hurt by my inadequate further¬ 
ance of his interests. 

I started to answer this fellow, but gave it up. 
How could I make such a person understand that 
I am not engaged in writing propaganda — for or 
against; that in this log I have recorded both the 
bitter and the sweet; and that whether it persuades 
others to go and do likewise, or to stick cozily by 
their firesides, is no concern of mine? 

There were a number of letters from experts in 
trial by trailer — some helpful and some caustic 
at what they considered my Milquetoast attitude 
toward “ roughing it.” 

I felt like answering them, too; but again, cui 
bonof I have “ roughed it.” I have sailed before 
the mast — though the ship was driven by steam 
and there were no masts to speak of. I have had a 
taste of soldiering. I have slept on the ground 
when no bed was available, and I have been rained 
on when I could find no shelter. I am still of the 
opinion that discomfort is something to be en¬ 
dured, if necessary, but avoided if possible. There 


6o 


Folding Bedouins 


are those who seem to like discomfort for its own 
sake: I am not one of them. I guess I am aging. 

Oh well, the sun is coming out now; and just to 
maintain a proper sense of proportion, I’m pasting 
one of these letters over the mirror in the bath¬ 
room. I shall read it every time I shave — and 
perhaps it will keep me from saying what I think 
about shaving in cold water. 

“ Were all fed up with O’Brien’s bellyaching 
about discomfort! Hasn’t he ever gone duck¬ 
hunting? And, as for lack of parking space, doesn’t 
he know that real trailer-folk never wheel up to 
the center of town looking for a night camp? 
With beds and a stove, what more does the guy 
want? (Oh, well — tell him there’s one in every 
service station and the attendants will button up 
his pantywaist.) 

“ He’s the sort of fellow who would take an um¬ 
brella on a sailing cruise, or pack a bundle of 
kindling on a camping trip, or worry about the 
crease of his Levi’s on a ranch, or wear his rubbers 
trout fishing. 

“ Next time you’re looking for an adaptable 
correspondent for an outing expedition, get some¬ 
one who can take it. Leave the whimsical, philo¬ 
sophical, artistic Mr. O’Brien at home, handy to 
his scented bath, slippers and easy chair.” 

Yes, I shall keep this letter for reference. It will 
be helpful when I feel myself going Persian. And 
I can quote it when my women folk complain. 



YES - NO ORANGE JUICE 

These lines are being written somewhere in the 
Everglades, while we pause for the midday halt by 
the side of the Tamiami trail. It is at such a time 
that I rejoice in my profession. I can, with honor 
and legitimate excuse, take to my typewriter while 
the women folk busy themselves in the covered 
wagon with the pots and pans. 



A flamingo stands motionless in a near-by pool, 
gazing hungrily at the black water. A couple of 
herons hide in the top of a palmetto, their long 

61 













Folding Bedouins 


62 

bills poised for gastronomic action. Vultures flap 
their way lazily over the cypress trees, and a little 
way down the road a Seminole Indian, in gor¬ 
geously colored shirt, is fixing a flat tire on his 
rusty old flivver. We are on the road again, and, 
for my part, with no little regret. Fort Myers en¬ 
deared itself to me because of an eating place called 
the B. 8c K. Garden Spot, where, for sixty-five cents, 
one could have the most succulent lobster, the 
flakiest pastry and real French-fried potatoes. 

Our most vivid remembrance of Fort Myers will 
remain our encounter on its main street, Sunday 
afternoon, with friends who were waiting for the 
evening train. They invited us to join them in a 
farewell libation. Accepting the invitation, we 
started in search of a suitable emporium. We dis¬ 
covered, however, that Florida — or this part of it, 
at any rate — does not permit the dispensing of 
potable spirits over a bar, or even at a table. You 
can buy bottled goods, but you cannot drink the 
contents on the premises. So we decided to have 
tea instead of potable spirits, and for that purpose 
we repaired to the Royal Palm. 

A uniformed flunky met us at the curb, two 
others opened the front door, and a fourth asked 
us our pleasure. When we said tea he answered 
sadly that the kitchen was closed — no tea. His 
words made us clap hands at our own folly. The 
idea of ordering tea or potable spirits in the land 
of citrus fruits! It was monstrous. With one 
voice we called for orange juice. But the flunky 


Yes — No Orange Juice 63 

shook his head again. Yes, he had no oranges. 
He thought, however, that he could supply some 
ginger ale. 

So we thanked him for his thought and said we 
would go to a drug store for our orange juice. At 
that he smiled wistfully through his tears. The 
drug stores of Fort Myers, he said, were closed on 
Sundays. In general he was right. But, after some 
search, we found one place that had wickedly 
stayed open. There we had chocolate ice cream 
sodas! 

Many things made us sorry to leave Fort Myers. 
There was, for example, the police. Imagine a 
place where the motorcycle cops tip their caps and 



say: “ Pardon me, sir, but your taillight is out. 
Will you be good enough to have it attended to as 
soon as you can? ” And where the crossing traffic 











Folding Bedouins 


64 

officers say: “ Really, madam, won’t you please 
stop at the stop signals? It would be a great help if 
you would.” 

A genial, slow-moving place is Fort Myers, 
where the tempo of existence is andante sostenuto, 
and where practically everybody you meet is a 
Lord Chesterfield, where a chair in the sun offers 
a large measure of earthly contentment, where 
shuffleboard is considered violent exercise, and 
where one of the most pretentious establishments 
in town belongs to the funeral director. 

It was hard to leave this paradise of the idle poor 
— and in more ways than one. When we rose this 
morning it appeared that we should be in Fort 
Myers more or less permanently. It had rained 
busily during the night and our trailer was down 
to its hubs in the mire. The moist sea air had also 
done its work with the threads of the lifting jack. 
They were well rusted. Our prospects were no 
brighter than was the sky. A small tourist camp is 
not the gayest place in the world under the best of 
circumstances. When a tropic rain is in progress 
the gaiety is even less pronounced. 

However, our lucky star was still in the ascend¬ 
ant and we were able to make the hitch with no 
discomfort beyond a thorough soaking. The 
wheels of the car took hold at once and before the 
morning was well advanced we were on our way 
across the state to another and more debatable kind 
of paradise — Miami. 



NO REST CURE 

At peep of day, or thereabouts, we left Fort Myers 
and headed the caravan for Miami, only one hun¬ 
dred and twenty-five miles across the Everglades 
and the cypress swamps. We arrived in this glit¬ 
tering playground shortly after noon. It is now 
dark and we have only just come to rest. 

Entering from the west, we first reached the sub¬ 
division of Coral Gables, now getting its second 
wind, real-estatically speaking. There we tarried, 
receiving black looks from white-coated butlers, 
and so pushed on to a haven more hospitable to 
trailer folk. 

I might mention that our party has been in¬ 
creased by the young man who is shortly to wed 
our daughter, and he is being trained in a number 
of qualities, such as patience and fortitude, by be¬ 
ing assigned to the task of driving. This is techni¬ 
cally not difficult, but on the emotional side it is a 
strain, for the directions are given by a committee 
of three. One result of this divided authority was 
that by midafternoon we found ourselves well on 
the way to Key West. 

Turning around, we made for Miami Beach. It 
was pouring rain, but we had ideas about lolling 

65 




66 


Folding Bedouins 


on the sands in the sunshine. However, a gas- 
station attendant advised against this. He said 
that trailers were not welcome on the beach and 
suggested a tourist camp only ten miles farther 
north. We proceeded to that place only to find 
that there were no cooking facilities. This was 
serious, since our stove was on the blink. So, it 
being difficult to turn around, we continued in a 
northerly direction. 

A few miles farther on we found an excellent 
trailer camp. However, we had to have a cabin for 
our young man, and there were no cabins. We 
could, of course, defy the conventions, and put 
him in the fourth bed of our trailer. But, not be- 
ing*familiar with trailer life, he had arrived with a 
considerable amount of baggage. This, if it 
could not be stowed in a cabin, had to be stowed 
in the car. If it were stowed in the car we could 
not go anywhere for dinner. And our stove being 
on the blink we had to go somewhere for dinner. 
It was all very complicated and I did not blame 
the manager of the camp for looking perplexed. 

So we turned westward, arriving presently at a 
very duck of a camp, with trailer space and a cabin 
right beside it — just what we wanted. Unhap¬ 
pily, it had just been taken — and it was the last 
space available. 

We were advised to try a town called Little 
River, where there was said to be a camp. On we 


No Rest Cure 


67 

went, twenty miles or so, and sure enough, there 
was a camp with a big sign on it: “ Cabin Vacant/’ 
We cheered at this, but prematurely, for it soon 
transpired that the occupant of this cabin had 
changed his or her mind and there was now no 
vacancy. 

So, into the setting sun, we wandered on. 
Halted at a crossing, we were approached by a man 
with a kind face, who gave us a circular about a 
camp called Belle Haven — a beautiful spot, ap¬ 
parently, with a dance hall and a swimming pool 
— only ten miles farther on. This was a happy 
omen and we spurred on — only to find that the 
place had no cabins. Extra men, the manager said, 
slept in tents. He advised Hialeah, only five 
miles away. 

Hialeah had a handsome racetrack, but no tour¬ 
ist camps that we could find. So we went on, bear¬ 
ing eastward and stopping here and there for ad¬ 
vice, until through the rainy twilight we saw signs 
advertising the Spanish stucco cabins of a Mr. Win¬ 
slow. We tacked for these, and, beating up 
through half a dozen miles of winding streets, 
finally reached them. 

It was pitch dark and we were more than a little 
fatigued with gypsy life. The rain had increased 
to something like a cloudburst and the palms 
bowed before a rising wind. We craved repose, 
with or without honor. Mr. Winslow was pre- 


68 


Folding Bedouins 


pared to provide it, in the shape of a little cottage, 
equipped with kitchen and other facilities, for 
$1.25 ahead. 

It seemed a little silly to be renting beds when 
we had a trailer full of them, but it appeared that 
Mr. Winslow was not licensed to let people sleep 
in trailers. We could park, but we could not 
sleep. There was nothing to do but capitulate. 

So the trailer stands outside, empty, dark and 
rather ridiculous. And as I sit here at my type¬ 
writer, listening to the howl of a wind which seems 
to have become a hurricane, and recording the 
events of the day, I am struck by the fact that it 
took less time, by a couple of hours, to cross the 
state of Florida than it did to find lodging in Mi¬ 
ami. The rest of the party lie stretched on their 
several beds, asleep. Travel by trailer is full of 
surprise, adventure and amusement, but as heaven 
is my judge, it is no rest cure! 



LIKE CINDERELLA 

It turns out that last night’s wind really was a small 
hurricane, tearing up palms and unroofing houses. 
We could see its marks as we went this morning to 
visit Ollie Trout’s Trailer Camp — the Taj Mahal 
of such establishments, with space for some three 
hundred rolling villas. 

We quickly discovered what pikers we were at 
this game. We had believed our outfit to be the 
last word in trailers, but near the entrance stood 
one of incredible size and grandeur, one which had 
cost its owner more than eight thousand dollars. 
A huge tent protected it from the sun, a neat para¬ 
pet of coral rock had been built around it, and a 
gentleman of color was busily polishing its brass- 
work. It seemed obvious that this equipage was 
on exhibition, and I was just about to step in for a 
look when the irate owner appeared to set me 
right. It was not on exhibition and it was not for 
sale. It was, he said tartly, a private residence. 

So we went away from this crusty fellow and 
picked up a more friendly wayfarer, a gentleman 
in a sombrero, with a trailer full of Navaho blan¬ 
kets and pottery which he had brought from 
69 





70 Folding Bedouins 

Gallup, New Mexico, and was (or had been) hope¬ 
ful of selling in Florida. Incidentally, he ex¬ 
pressed himself as willing to swap the entire state 
of Florida for one square yard of the southwest. 



We were joined by a trailer salesman, and there 
was much talk about this mode of transport. We 
agreed upon several things. One was that the ar¬ 
rangements for taking care of trailers lagged far 
behind the trailers themselves. As I have said be¬ 
fore, the great oil companies are missing an op¬ 
portunity if they do not enter the trailer-camp 
business, with stations located, say, two hundred 
miles apart, on the main highways. My guess is 
that such a development will be a fact within a 
couple of years. It will be a logical extension of 
activity for those paragons of efficient courtesy, the 












Like Cinderella y1 

filling station men. They have the experience and 
the temperament to make them the ideal care¬ 
takers of trailer-travelers. 

The second fact brought out in this debate be¬ 
tween experts was the astonishing change which 
has taken place in the market for trailers. It used 
to be, said the salesman, that the only people who 
bought trailers were those for whom economy was 
the prime consideration. Buyers are now coming 
from the higher income brackets, taking to trailer 
travel not because it is cheaper, but because they 
like it better. He pointed to an example near at 
hand, a luxurious “ job ” costing several thousand 
dollars. It was owned by an elderly couple of con¬ 
siderable wealth. Their chauffeur did the cook¬ 
ing and dishwashing. He lived in a tent, pitched 
near by. 

And so, my head buzzing with plans for a trailer 
equipped with valet and butler, a bowling alley, 
swimming pool and movie theater, we drove off to 
Miami Beach — which, dear reader, is not to be 
confused with Miami. In the opinion of beach 
folk, it is to the city what Sheffield plate is to the 
paper dishware of the five and ten. Here are the 
homes of those who pay in income taxes far more 
than most people earn. 

On a series of synthetic islands, separated from 
the mainland by lagoons and reached by cause¬ 
ways, one finds varying degrees of exclusiveness. 
The home of A 1 Capone is not far, in distance, 


Folding Bedouins 


7 * 

from that of a man who was once a candidate for 
president of the United States. There are bath¬ 
houses where anybody can rent a bathing suit, and 
there is the Bath Club, which no one may enter 



save in the custody of a member. In this sanctu¬ 
ary, while the orchestra played “ Boots and Sad¬ 
dles,” we dug our toes in the aristocratic sand, and 
lunched on a variety of delectables that would 
make Lucullus spin in his grave. To look at us, 
no one would ever have guessed that we were 
trailer folk. The dresses of the ladies came un¬ 
wrinkled from their hangers in the rolling cabin. 
Indeed, the women of the party, in whom this 
Persian atmosphere has engendered a certain dis¬ 
taste for the housekeeping phase of trailer life, go 
so far as to suggest that the ideal way to travel is to 













Like Cinderella 


73 

have a trailer used only as a baggage car or a port¬ 
able wardrobe. 

From caviare and cognac with the opulent gen¬ 
try of the Bath Club we proceeded down the island 
for a round of golf at a course whose membership 
roll reads like that of the Liberty League, and 
whose locker room is something between West¬ 
minster Abbey and the Grand Central Station. 
After that we dropped in at the “ cottage ” of a 
friend — an establishment suggestive of the abode 
which the genii tossed up for Sindbad the Sailor — 
for cocktails served by a Filipino in a white jacket. 

Then, suddenly, the clock struck the witching 
hour. Titania, the queen of the fairies, waved her 
wand and blew her whistle. Like Cinderella, we 
shed our fine raiment, and in the gathering dusk 
crept back to our covered wagon. 



WASTED COMPLIMENTS 

Miami Beach is an ideal laboratory for the study of 
economic conditions. They are all here, from the 
frail who doesn’t know where her next meal is com¬ 
ing from, but who, from experience, believes that 
heaven or a lonesome bookmaker will provide; up 
(or down) to the tired chairmen of boards of di¬ 
rectors, who get blisters on their fingers from cut¬ 
ting coupons and cankers on their tongues from 
cursing Roosevelt. 

These islands, manufactured by pumping sand 
into the original tangle of mangrove roots, form 
a show window of social contrast. At one end are 
honkytonks, the barbecues with curb service which 
are the southern version of the hot-dog stand, the 
cheap boarding houses and the municipal beaches, 
alive with the sort of N’Yawker that Milt Gross 
immortalized in Nize Baby. Cigar-smoking gents 
with conspicuous paunches, obese crones in flow¬ 
ered pajamas, semi-nude young females with 
painted smiles, snappy young chaps in Broadway’s 
latest variant on the dark-blue shirt and yellow tie, 
crowd the landscape. 

As one proceeds northward the picture changes, 
getting more expensive and more exclusive. Grass 
74 





Wasted Compliments 


75 


appears. The hotels and casinos grow more pre¬ 
tentious. The beach is no longer free. There are 
no more itinerant photographers, no vendors of 
popcorn or ice cream. The people dress more 
decorously. Then, like a slap in the face, a fence 
appears. This is the end of free access to the sands. 



From now on* the shore is lined with private homes, 
apartment houses and hotels where rooms run into 
important money. Those who live along here 
have their own beaches, though they aren’t using 
them much this year because of that tiger of the 
sea, that disrespecter of persons, the barracuda 
shark. 

Casting about for a place to lunch, we chose 
Louis’ Grill, largely because it had tables on the 
sidewalk in the Parisian manner. This proved a 






Folding Bedouins 


76 

lucky choice, and we had Spanish mackerel about 
which one could rightly rhapsodize. Calling the 
head waiter, I exclaimed with enthusiasm: 44 Surely 
Louis is a Frenchman! His last name must be 
something like Vattel or Foyot or Prunier? ” The 
head waiter did not beam at this as I expected he 
would. On the contrary, the look he gave me 
was definitely sour. 44 Louis is not a Frenchman/' 
he said. 44 And his last name ain't any of them you 
mentioned. It'sFishbein." 

And so, making no further efforts to dispense 
compliments that weren't appreciated, we moved 
on to the north, through more and more exclusive¬ 
ness, until we came to those temples of privacy, the 
Bath and Surf Clubs. Turning off from the latter, 
we went on to that final triumph of isolation, the 
Indian Creek Golf Club. At a bridge, reminiscent 
of A Century of Progress Exposition, we were chal¬ 
lenged by a guard in a gray uniform, and our 
credentials were examined. It was like getting 
into Buckingham Palace. The only difference was 
that the sentry wasn’t in busby and scarlet tunic. 
He did, however, say 44 right-o ” when he let us 
pass. 

Indian Creek is probably the hardest place in 
the world for an uninvited guest to penetrate. It 
stands on an island of its own, with a well-guarded 
bridge as the only means of access. Here the mil¬ 
lionaire can really be alone. If there are three 
foursomes on the fairway at one time it is consid- 


Wasted Compliments 77 

ered a frightful state of congestion, and a meeting 
of the greens committee is called at once to take 
action. 

The clubhouse is a cozy little place, about the 
size and somewhat in the manner of the state thea¬ 
ter in the City of Mexico. The men’s locker room 
alone is enough to abash a visitor. Its vaulted ceil¬ 
ing suggests one of the college halls at Oxford, and 
this ecclesiastical atmosphere is borne out by the 
lockers themselves. No crude contraptions of 
olive-painted steel are they. They are of carved 
wood, like the choir stalls of an ancient church. 
And the members do not lace their shoes on 
benches. There are no benches — only uphol¬ 
stered chairs and soft divans, covered with delicate 
chintz. Even the most hobnailed personality is 
subdued by this atmosphere of elegance, and the 
crudest parvenu comes quickly to the manners of 
a Groton graduate. 

Leaving the painful diversion of golf to my com¬ 
panions, I repaired to silent communion with my 
thoughts in the chaste solitude of the men’s locker 
room. At any moment I expected the singing of 
Gregorian chants, but no sound marred the mag¬ 
nificent stillness. There were no raucous voices 
complaining of missed putts. Not even a servitor 
appeared. Here, at last, was the perfect peace I 
had traveled so far to find. Silently, reverently, I 
removed my smallclothes, and gave myself over to 
the sensuous luxury of a bath. I reflected, as I 


Folding Bedouins 


7 8 

stood there in ecstatic enjoyment of unlimited hot 
water, that the onyx stall of the shower was about 
the same size as our entire trailer. 

Happy moments, those, in the caress of Indian 
Creek’s hottest water and softest towels. I shall 
always look back on them with the tenderest grati¬ 
tude. The roughest tourist camp can never ob¬ 
literate their memory. 











GOURMET’S DREAM 

We spent an hour this afternoon in a home which 
is one of the few Florida establishments that have 
the patina of age and repose. Its owner is one of 
the real old-timers — been here, man and boy, 
nigh on to twenty years! 

As we sat on an enclosed balcony, whence we 
could see the sun reddening behind the minarets 
of Miami, across the lagoon, we talked of politics. 
But something set us off on the Civil War. From 
there, by stages not altogether clear to me now, we 
came to the subject of Florida. And as the word 
“ ham ” inevitably suggests the word “ eggs,” the 
subject of Florida brought the name of Henry L. 
Doherty into the talk. 

He, as you may know, is the rich oil man who 
appeared on the scene, with ready cash in his 
pockets, when the local boom burst. He bought 
up properties from which the bottom had fallen 
out. Today, among other things, he owns a num¬ 
ber of hotels. But where do you suppose he spends 
most of his time? Yes, children, in a trailer — a 
magnificent affair, as big as a Pullman, with a sort 
of conning tower in front from which he can see 
79 







80 Folding Bedouins 

the road ahead, and a pair of uniformed chauffeurs 
to drive. 

It was now time for dinner, so, leaving the hos¬ 
pitality of our friends, we proceeded — on their 
advice — to an establishment located down near 
the dog-racing track and the shooting galleries, a 
place called Joe's. There we made the acquaint¬ 
ance of a gourmet's dream, the stone crab — a 
crustacean to be had only here and in Cuba. Rich 
in iodine, it cannot be kept for much over twenty- 
four hours, and it cannot be transported alive. 
That is why stone crabs, though plentiful, are 
expensive. More succulent than the finest lob¬ 
ster, they fetch two dollars a portion — and are 
worth it. 

Judging from our behavior that we were novices 
in crab-eating, Joe Jr. (whose last name is Weiss) 
volunteered instructions. He showed us how to 
salvage portions we had found inaccessible, how to 
remove the shell, how to mix lemon juice with the 
drawn butter, and how to dunk the rich white 
meat in the sauce. And finally he introduced us 
to his mother, wife of the original Joe, who pre¬ 
sided over the cash register. She had come from 
Hungary, she said. And, when I asked her if she 
didn’t want to go back to the land of paprika, she 
said no; she preferred Florida. 

Well, there may be souls so dead as not to soar 
on a gorge of stone crabs, but if such there be I 
trust that I may meet them infrequently. 


Gourmet's Dream 81 

Our faces still moist with crab meat and lemon 
butter, we left Joe's in search of our last evening's 
entertainment in Miami Beach. After some de¬ 
bate it was decided that we should top off our visit 
by attending a performance of Minsky’s burlesque 
show. This is the dominant feature of the county 
fair which the south end of exclusive Miami Beach 



has become. It is a branch — and a profitable one, 
I suspect — of the Minsky’s for which New York is 
famous. It is housed in a makeshift shelter on a 
pier, but the price of admission is fairly high. 

The burlesque shows of the big cities are patron¬ 
ized almost exclusively by men. But considerably 
more than half the customers in this one were 
women — most of them beyond the first bloom of 
youth. And the smuttier the jokes the more the 








Folding Bedouins 


82 

feminine part of the audience laughed. We have 
certainly proceeded far from the quaint Victorian 
notion that the so-called gentler sex lives in a 
more rarefied moral atmosphere than does the 
male. 

I confess that I was puzzled by Mr. Minsky’s en¬ 
tertainment. It was a graceless hash of clumsy 
dancing, nasal singing and jokes that ranged from 
the merely stale to the actively decomposing. In 
the long wait between acts hawkers marched up 
and down the aisles peddling what they assured us 
was the sort of pictorial depravity that delights the 
natives of Paris, France, and which is, in fact, the 
sort of depravity that infuriates the real natives of 
Paris, France, and makes those selling it subject to 
the attentions of the police. 

What baffled me most about Mr. Minsky’s ef¬ 
forts was how successful they were. The custom¬ 
ers were not out slumming. They had come to be 
amused, and they were amused. Their laughter 
was spontaneous and from the midriff. They were 
delighted by endless repetitions of the strip act, 
that standby of burlesque in which a well- 
contoured female removes her attire, bit by bit, 
and slips behind a curtain just before the job is 
complete. 

It was a pleasure to retreat to our trailer, wash 
ourselves well and try to forget Minsky’s while we 
remembered the fresh, clean whiteness of the stone 
crabs. 



NEW WORLDS CONQUERED 

Our retreat from Miami, this morning, took 
longer than it should. The torrential rains of the 
last few days had buried the wheels of our covered 
wagon in the sand, and the salt wind had coated the 
threads of the lifting jack with rust. Our land¬ 
lord’s wife was helpful, but not experienced. For 
lubricant she proffered a can of shellac. However, 
she found some oil also, and we should soon have 
been well on our way northward except for the not 
unexpected discovery that one of the party had left 
belongings behind. The frequency with which 
this discovery is made, I find, increases geometri¬ 
cally with the number of persons in the party, and 
it is made usually when we have gone about eight 
miles from the starting point. 

By noon, however, we were out of the Miami 
suburbs and in the midst of that characteristic fea¬ 
ture of the Florida landscape — the subdivision 
that never grew up. The coast, from Miami north¬ 
ward, alternates flamboyant castles of more-or-less 
Spanish architecture with wind-swept acres of 
marsh grass — the cemeteries of some realtor’s 
dream. 

As we bowled along I fell to speculating on that 
83 







Folding Bedouins 


84 

symbol of Florida, the palm tree. Of no use that I 
can discover, save for the coconuts which grow on 
some of them, it is a singularly inconsequential 
growth. Its huge trunk rises high above the 
ground, only to culminate in a tassel of unlovely 
foliage that creaks in the wind like saddle leather. 
Its roots are negligible, the seemingly solid tree 
being held to earth by nodules as trivial as the 
growth at the other end. No great force is re¬ 
quired to push it over. Yet it can easily be righted 
again, and, when it is, quickly returns to life. 

Florida, I gather, is like that. Panics may flatten 
it financially. Hurricanes may blow down its 
buildings. Frost may ruin its fruits. But it 
promptly recovers from any and all of these 
troubles, to bloom with renewed opulence. 

In a trifle over two hours we reached Palm 
Beach, a place which is geographically like Miami, 
but which in spirit is quieter and in fact is smaller, 
richer, more exclusive and more sophisticated. 
Palm Beach is a spit of sand which flowered to its 
present beauty under the hand of that imaginative 
oil magnate and railroad builder, Henry Flagler. 
It is separated by a narrow strip of water, called 
Lake Worth, from the mainland town of West 
Palm Beach, where abide the purveyors, caretakers 
and camp followers of the winter residents. This 
is really not a lake at all, but an arm of the sea, 
with an inlet at either end. Access to Palm Beach 
is by bridge. 


New Worlds Conquered 85 

It was early afternoon when we crossed to Palm 
Beach, and we expected to be halted at the bridge. 
Palm Beach is legally part of the United States, but 
in fact it is a separate nation, if not, indeed, a sepa¬ 
rate planet. It was not likely that so exclusive a 
community would welcome a trailer. Ours, how¬ 
ever, was not noticed, and we were able to drive 
serenely among the bicycle chairs and the custom¬ 
bodied Rolls-Royces until we found the place we 
sought. 

This was the home of a friend, a retired finan¬ 
cier. It was our plan to drive up to his door and 
surprise him with the impish suggestion that we 
park on his lawn. The surprise, however, was on 
us; for no sooner did he see our caravan than he 
proposed that we anchor in his front yard and sleep 
in his house. We compromised by parking in the 
street while we changed clothes for a swim in the 
near-by ocean. 

When we had finished our dip, with steamers 
coming down the gulf stream so close in shore that 
we could almost read their names, we returned to 
our friend’s house, and in his patio tried to catch 
up, for a few leisured minutes, with the news of 
the world. But the sun was setting and we had to 
be about the serious business of locating ourselves 
for the night. 

And so, through streets that had never seen a 
trailer, but which gave not the slightest evidence 
of the fact, we went back across the bridge. Our 


Folding Bedouins 


86 

goal was the Lakeside Camp, which was said to be 
just north of West Palm Beach. It proved to be 
just north of the city limits — which meant that it 
was almost as far out in the underbrush as it would 
be in Los Angeles. 

The designer of this camp had not foreseen trail¬ 
ers. I gave one look at the place and said despair¬ 
ingly: “ Drive on.” But the head of our clan is 
both optimistic and resourceful. Disregarding my 
fretful pessimism, she had us drive into the place 
and unhitch. Then she took a hand at pushing the 
trailer into a stall that was wider by not more than 
the breadth of a hair than the trailer itself. 
Strangely enough, the thing was done quite easily. 
Everyone was astonished except the little Na¬ 
poleon who had conceived the idea. While the 
rest stood and marveled, she went briskly about 
the preparations for dinner. It is lucky for all of 
us that she is in command of this expedition. 
Without her we should still be mired in a Georgia 
cornfield. If she wanted to, I believe she could 
park that trailer in the top of a palmetto! 



THROUGH THE NEEDLE’S EYE 

My pencil crumbles and my fingers grow floppy as 
I try to set down the events of yesterday. Words 
fail me. Even with a map, it would be difficult to 
make things clear. 

To begin with, we received a telegraphic invita¬ 
tion from a friend who owns one of the grander 
establishments in Palm Beach, to move from our 
camp to his palatial estate. He was not to arrive 
for a day or two, but we were to make ourselves 
comfortable at once. So we hitched up the trailer 
and started happily for our new anchorage. When 
we arrived we found that the servants had not been 
apprised of our coming; that is, they had not been 
apprised of the manner of our coming. Even if 
they had been, there was nothing in their training 
or experience to qualify them for so strange a 
situation. 

I explained to the butler that we had come to 
camp, and he said, “ Very good, sir.” It was plain, 
however, that he did not feel very good about it. 

Our first step was to find a suitable location for 
the trailer. Our friend's estate, though consider¬ 
able, was designed in the days before trailers, and a 
high stone wall presented difficulties. There was, 
87 




88 


Folding Bedouins 


to be sure, a gate; but it was a narrow, not to say a 
merely decorative, gate, and at such a peculiar 
angle that — well, lacking a map, you will just 
have to take my word for it that getting a trailer 
through this particular gate was much harder than 
the scriptural problem of getting a camel through 
a needle’s eye. 

We had, however, got the trailer into and out 
of strange places and we were not daunted. Fur¬ 
thermore, the Little Corporal had gone off to get 
groceries, and it seemed a good opportunity for us 
men folk to show what we could do. 

After first mapping our course of action and 
measuring everything carefully, we tackled the 
iron gates. One of these we pried open and the 
other conveniently fell apart. Fortunately they 
were old gates and practically rusted away. We 
next found that the aperture was, as we had cal¬ 
culated, wider than the trailer. It was not much 
wider — only a millimeter or so, but for fellows 
like us that was enough. 

This preliminary work done, we drove the cara¬ 
van over the lawn to a position previously charted, 
and there, with the almost comatose butler help¬ 
ing, we unhitched and prepared to push. When I 
invited the butler to help push he looked at his 
white jacket, then at the sky, and said piteously, 
“ Very good, sir.” It was even clearer than before, 
however, that he did not find things good. 

By this time we had been joined by a French 


Through the Needle’s Eye 89 

maid, slightly hysterical; several scullery wenches; 
and a dark fellow in a blue smock, who said things 
in Spanish which I did not understand, but which 
I guessed were protests, if not prayers. There were 
also numerous representatives of the native popu¬ 
lation and several small boys. So, with all hands 
heaving and everything working out according to 



our calculations (except that the butler fell under 
the wheels, considerably sullying his white jacket), 
we pushed the trailer through the needle’s eye — 
or at least as far as it would go, a palm tree having 
sprung up to impede further progress. 

We now paused to admire our handiwork. As 
we stood there, mopping our brows, we found two 
things to mar the perfection of our achievement. 
One was the fact that we had cut off half the ap- 


















Folding Bedouins 


9 ° 

proach to our host’s garage. This, of course, was 
trifling, since the weather is mild down here and it 
wouldn’t matter if a car or two had to stand out¬ 
doors overnight. But the other defect was more 
serious. The door to the trailer was in such a posi¬ 
tion that it could not be opened. And all our bag¬ 
gage was inside the trailer. 

We thought this over for awhile, accompanied 
by the thinking (more audible) of the French 
maid, the Spanish valet, the scullery wenches and 
what remained of the butler. Then we decided 
that the best thing would be to hitch up again and 
go somewhere else. To this decision the butler 
uttered what I thought was his first really heartfelt 
“ Very good, sir.” 

It was even harder getting the trailer out than 
getting it in had been. It managed to get stuck in 
the most unexpected places, and in general be¬ 
haved like an arrow, or a thorn, or, to use a Florida 
simile, a woodtick. But we were getting a little 
anxious for fear that the Little Corporal might re¬ 
turn and not be tolerant about the slight error we 
had made in our calculations. So, using perhaps 
more speed than finesse, thereby removing part of 
the wall, a wreath or two of bougainvillaea, several 
bits of assorted shrubbery and part of what had 
once been the butler’s white jacket, we pried the 
trailer out again. 

Being fatigued by that time, we just hauled it 
to the nearest vacant lot. There it reposes. And 


Through the Needle’s Eye 91 

if anybody wants it moved he can jolly well move 
it himself. We are through for the day. Our 
thought is to sit quietly while the butler puts him¬ 
self together again and is able to move something 
liquid and refreshing in our direction. 

I gather, however, from what the French maid 
said, that the butler is through for good. 



REGRETTABLE COINCIDENCE 

Our host arrived by plane early this morning — 
probably in response to an S O S from his butler. 
I found him looking gloomily at the effects of our 
efforts to get our trailer into his garden. He 
seemed to feel that a trailer was only slightly less 
devastating than a hurricane. I pacified him as 
best I could, and was just about to crack a break¬ 
fast egg, when the doorbell rang. In a moment the 
butler appeared and there was a vengeful gleam in 
his eye as he fixed it on me. “ It's a policeman, 
sir/’ he said ominously. “ He’s looking for you, 
sir.” 

This proved to be true. There was a policeman 
and he was looking for me. It was about the 
trailer. It appears that what we had thought a 
vacant lot was really somebody’s kitchen garden. 
And, even if it had been a vacant lot, the owner 
thereof considered that mooring a trailer thereon 
constituted trespass. If we didn’t move the thing 
immediately, the policeman said, we would have 
trouble. 

I laughed heartily at the policeman’s warning. 
It seemed to me quaint that he should suggest the 
92 





Regrettable Coincidence 93 

possibility of future trouble. I should have 
thought it clear that we were having trouble al¬ 
ready. 

“ Well, what am I to do? ” I demanded of my 
host. 

“ Do? ” he echoed mournfully. “ Haven’t you 
done enough? Isn’t it sufficient to have wrecked 
the most beautiful antique gate this side of Seville; 
to have put wagon tracks on the finest lawn in 
Dade County; to have uprooted several rare exam¬ 
ples of flowering plants, and to have unhinged the 
reason of an even more valuable butler? Or don’t 
you consider that doing anything? ” 

“ Your position is illogical, and, if you will par¬ 
don my saying so, ill-mannered,” I protested. 
“ You invite me and my family to be your guests 
in this monument of unearned increment, and 
now you behave as if you regretted it.” 

“ I am childlike and candid,” said my friend. 
“ I do regret it. I regret it terribly. I invited you, 
it is true. I didn’t invite a plague of locusts. You 
are deadlier than the boll weevil or the Japanese 
beetle. Oh, my lovely hibiscus, my pure, smooth 
lawn, my antique gate, my historic wall, my pre¬ 
cious butler! ” 

“ Stop sniveling, you wretched materialist,” I 
ordered sharply. “It is only the things of the 
spirit that matter. You can plant everything 
again, including your butler, and everything will 
grow. It’s a wonderful climate for growing things. 


Folding Bedouins 


94 

But meanwhile, I ask you again, what am I to do 
about my trailer? ” 

This book might fall into the hands of the 
young, and I cannot, therefore, give a verbatim 
transcript of just what he said about my trailer. 
Suffice it that he spoke eloquently and in such tones 
that the butler, coughing discreetly, withdrew to 
the pantry. 



I had to interrupt the flow of invective. “ The 
hour advances,” I said firmly. “ Presently there 
will be more constables coming to tell me that I 
must move. There is no question about the law’s 
being on their side. The one question is — where 
shall I move tof ” 

My friend grew sarcastic. “ I suppose you will 
suggest that I remove enough of my wall to permit 











Regrettable Coincidence 95 

your monstrous vehicle to get through. That 
would be a logical suggestion, too. You have al¬ 
ready made a good start at it.” 

“ No,” I said firmly. “ I am a sensitive person 
and I can tell when I or my trailer is unwelcome. 
I am not one to force myself where Fm not wanted. 
Wild horses could not drag my trailer through 
your gates. As a matter of fact, after our experi¬ 
ments of yesterday, I doubt if even a brace of cater¬ 
pillar tractors could do it. No, I shall not let a 
mere trailer mar our hitherto beautiful friend¬ 
ship. I shall take the thing elsewhere. But I ap¬ 
peal to you, as one who knows the real estate of this 
region, to tell me where.” 

“ There are several places you could take it,” 
said my friend thoughtfully. “ One is the place 
that is paved with good intentions. Another is 
Lake Worth — assuming, of course, that the 
darned thing wouldn’t float and become a menace 
to navigation. And a third is to make it keep com¬ 
pany with another of my afflictions — the vacant 
lot across the street, which I bought during the 
boom and have not yet been able to get rid of. 

“ The more I think of it,” he went on, “ the 
more I believe that this third solution would be 
the most appropriate. I have pains in my solar 
plexus every time I look at that vacant lot, and it 
will pain me only a little bit more to see your me¬ 
chanical termite upon it.” 

And so it has come to pass that our trailer is 


Folding Bedouins 


96 

now moored next to a “ For Sale ” sign. This is a 
regrettable coincidence and it gives a false impres¬ 
sion, but there seems to be no other anchorage 
available. Incidentally, it is worthy of mention 
that more people have asked the price of the trailer 
than have asked the price of the lot! 


PLACE OF CONTRADICTIONS 


The essence of all philosophy is embodied in the 
phrase, “ Know Thyself/’ So few really do that 
the exception is worth noting. He is the proprie¬ 
tor of the tourist camp in West Palm Beach, where 
we tarried the other night. 



Exuberant over my experience as a nomad on 
wheels, I suggested to him that he should at once 
set about acquiring more land, and so be in posi¬ 
tion to accommodate the trailers which would soon 
be coming over the highways in ever-increasing 



















98 Folding Bedouins 

numbers. To this counsel of wisdom he shook his 
head. “ I don’t want no trailers,” he said glumly. 
“ Matter of fact, I don’t even want no tourists. I 
don’t like this here tourist-camp business. It’s a 
helluva business. I’m goin’ to get out of it soon 
as I can. Seems like I ain’t fitted for it. I lose my 
temper too danged easy. Them tourists just get 
my goat, that’s all.” He went off muttering about 
folks that ran away with his soap and left their 
cabins like pigpens; and we slunk guiltily out of 
sight. 

Many observers have written about Palm Beach 
and reached a variety of conflicting conclusions. 
That is not surprising, for it is a contradictory 
land. One is likely to be confused by a place 
where the richest and most influential go devoutly 
every Sunday to listen in rapt approval to sermons 
on the vanity of riches. 

Palm Beach is supposed to be the special play¬ 
ground of the very affluent and certainly its great 
estates are the most luxurious in the world. But 
high walls and watchful servitors keep them re¬ 
mote from the vulgar eye, if they are not, indeed, 
actually remote in miles. They have their own 
swimming pools, their own polo fields, their own 
jazz orchestras, their own movie theaters, their 
own tennis courts and their own scandals. Their 
wealthy owners — or, of recent years, their wealthy 
tenants, for wealth has to some degree changed 
hands — hardly ever appear in public, except to 
fish in the ocean or play golf at the Seminole or the 


Place of Contradictions 99 

Gulf Stream — superb courses which by no license 
of words could be called public. 

On the other hand, there are many quite modest 
houses in Palm Beach and quite modest people 
living in them. These, while not of the gilded va¬ 
riety that supply copy for the Sunday supplements, 
are not, to be sure, of the common herd. It takes 
quite a bit of change to rent even the most modest 
of the Palm Beach cottages. 



Once established, however, the visitor can have 
a good deal of fun for nothing. There are no 
shuffleboard tournaments as there are at Fort 
Myers and St. Petersburg, but there is a great 
stretch of beach open to anyone who wants to use 
it. People go there on bicycles, afoot or in busses 
from the small hotels, tourist camps and trailers of 
West Palm, and step directly into the surf. These 







lOO 


Folding Bedouins 


are quiet people. If they aren’t quiet by nature, 
uniformed guards will take courteous steps to see 
that they learn quietness — or move on, say, to 
Miami. 

There are inexpensive restaurants along the 
shore, but no shooting galleries or burlesque 
houses, and women were required to include 
stockings as part of their bathing costumes long 
after the rest of the world had gone nudist. To¬ 
day, of course, the accepted attire is as scanty as it 
is anywhere. Not even Palm Beach could stand in¬ 
definitely in the path of progress. 

There are dancing and drinking establishments 
for the dark hours, but they are neither numerous 
nor blatant. Palm Beach is decorous even in its 
vice. No church could have a more subdued at¬ 
mosphere than the famous old building of white 
clapboards which houses Mr. Bradley’s roulette 
wheels. This is known officially as the “ Beach 
Club,” and it is far more exclusive than most real 
clubs. 

There may be things of import going on in this 
world — wars, strikes, revolutions, hunger, and 
the collision of planets — but Palm Beach knows 
not of them. Drowsing tranquilly on its spit of 
sand, fishing, playing at games, shopping in its 
shadowed arcades, downing vast quantities of pot¬ 
able spirit, it heeds not the rumble of distant 
drums. 

I shall be sorry to leave it, but the day of de- 


Place of Contradictions 101 

parture draws near. Life is real, life is earnest, and 
across the street, already overgrown with tropic 
shrubbery, our trailer stands leaning on its jack, 
in mute appeal to be up and doing. 



NOT FOR THE EFFETE 

Now and then a letter survives my various forward¬ 
ing addresses and catches up with me. One came 
this morning with the following comment from a 
friend and reader: 

“ I have followed your wanderings by trailer 
with a good deal of interest; for I have long cher¬ 
ished the notion of trying this mode of transport. 
However, after reading your reports, I think I shall 
give up the idea. It isn’t so much what you say as 
what I can read between the lines. ,, 

This communication demands an immediate 
answer! So, instead of discussing the habits of the 
sailfish, as I had intended, I shall answer it. 

My dear sir, I beg of you not to read between my 
lines. The whole story is in the lines themselves — 
nothing added, nothing left out. I have tried to 
be scrupulously truthful in these articles, because 
I realize that there are people who may be moved 
by them either to try trailer travel or to forego it. 

The best advice I can give the doubtful is to bor¬ 
row an outfit or rent one before buying. Trailers, 
like caviar, modern music, beach picnics and fish¬ 
ing, are not for everyone. People so effete that 


102 






Not for the Effete 


103 

they abhor any form of “ roughing it ” would cer¬ 
tainly find life in a trailer more work than play. 
Likewise, people so crystallized in habit that the 
taste for adventure has left them, and for whom 
there is no salt in encounters with the unexpected, 
are advised to stick to trains or conventional motor¬ 
ing. 

The trailer has been developed to a high point 
of ingenuity, but the fact remains that for several 
people to cook, eat, sleep and argue in a space meas¬ 
uring less than one hundred square feet means a 
certain amount of congestion. It calls for good dis¬ 
positions and mutual forbearance, even in fine 
weather. When it rains the psychological difficul¬ 
ties are multiplied. 

The hardest thing about trailer travel is dispos¬ 
ing of the trailer when you want to make camp. 
It is true that it can be unhitched anywhere. But 
“ anywhere ” does not often provide electricity. 
This, to be sure, is unimportant, for one can do 
very well with oil lamps, or even candles. But 
still more rarely does “ anywhere ” provide toilet 
facilities. One can, of course, arrange things like 
soldiers on a march, but after the novelty of an¬ 
choring for the night wherever you happen to be 
has worn off the wayfarer tends to seek a camp 
where he can plug into the lighting circuit, get hot 
running water, and find civilized plumbing. This 
may be deplorable—an evidence that one has 
been ruined by mechanized life — but it is so. 


Folding Bedouins 


104 

Well-equipped camps are available, but they are 
not numerous. They are, in fact, comparatively 
rare. And candor compels me to say that the best 
that I have seen are not very good. In most cases 
they are makeshifts, hastily improvised to meet a 
new demand, badly drained, awkwardly arranged 
and with sanitary equipment which at best may 
be called questionable. 

These are the hard facts of life in a trailer, as I 
have found it. In California and the southwest 
the tourist camp has reached a development it has 
not attained elsewhere. In another year or two the 
rest of the country will catch up — of that I am 
sure. 

Meanwhile, the trailer has a long list of advan¬ 
tages to offset its disadvantages. First and fore¬ 
most is its economy. It makes possible wintering 
in the south for less than the cost of staying at home 
in the north. Furthermore, it permits the carrying 
of far more baggage than would be possible — or, 
at least, endurable — by any other method. 

As I look about me in our traveling home I ob¬ 
serve the most appalling amount of impedimenta 
— several sets of golf clubs, tennis racquets, bath¬ 
ing suits, a typewriter, a drawing board, a painter's 
easel and materials, cameras, a radio and a whole 
library of books. Nor are these things stuffed 
away in trunks. Everything is readily accessible. 
And clothing, instead of being rumpled in bags 
and suitcases, is arranged neatly on hangers. 


Not for the Effete 105 

The trailer is here to stay and it will make many 
changes in our way of life. Though it is an infant 
industry now, I believe it will be a giant before 
long, with great numbers of people employed in 
servicing it. In the long run I suspect that it will 
prove another nail in the coffin of urban conges¬ 
tion. No longer will the city dweller be content 
with short week-end trips in a crowded country¬ 
side. People of small means will find it possible 
to take inexpensive vacations far from home. 

My whole experience with the trailer has been 
in and between cities, where the difficulties are 
greatest and the contrasts with normal living most 
acute. But I think that the trailer will find its best 
service in making possible inexpensive trips to the 
wilds. For city folk, going to other cities is not the 
best of vacations. A city man will have more fun 
getting as far away from cities as possible. Hith¬ 
erto, a hunting or fishing trip was, in cost, beyond 
the poor man. Now, with a trailer, and perhaps 
a collapsible boat stowed in it, the forest primeval 
is his to command. 



FUTILE FUN 

The rich, contrary to general belief, do not lead 
a jolly life, free from every care and strife. Far 
from it. They work like — well, they work hard. 

Consider the chatelaine of the establishment in 
which these lines are written. There are some 
twenty guests, and at least half as many servants 
to wait upon them. To take the guests about 
there is a flotilla of motor cars, and down at a dock 
on Lake Worth is moored a yacht. True, the 
mistress of the place has a housekeeper to take off 
her shoulders most of the details of management. 
But I observe that many details remain. Provid¬ 
ing breakfast is a problem in itself. The young 
folk, after dancing all night, do not rise until 
eleven, but the fishing fans are up at dawn. In 
between those hours there is a steady stream of 
guests drifting in for grapefruit and coffee. And 
after they are fed, cars have to be provided to take 
them to their various amusements. 

I have spent a whole day in deliberate waste of 
my opportunities. I resisted my host's entreaties 
to join him in fishing for pompano. Without re¬ 
grets, I let a party go off for golf at Boca Raton. I 


106 







Futile Fun 


107 

was not interested in lying on the beach at the Bath 
and Tennis Club. I refused to make one of mixed 
doubles at the Everglades. And when the gilded 
youth had rubbed enough sleep out of their eyes 
to be ready for cocktails at the pool, and invited 
me to join them, I declined without hesitation. 

The reason for all this nonconformity was that 
I had important business to attend to. I wanted 
to paint a picture of the patio, showing the Spanish 
stairs, with their wrought-iron rail, and the sun¬ 
light filtering through the archways. 

It is dark now, and all day I have toiled at this 
problem, struggling to make plaster look like 
plaster, and not like bakelite or weathered oak or 
whitewashed cork or Ivory soap. And I have 
failed gorgeously. The other guests paid little at¬ 
tention to what was obviously a harmless mania — 
one, indeed, which was to be expected in a person 
who traveled in a trailer. But the servants behaved 
like canaries who have found a sparrow in their 
nest. They had become accustomed to such forms 
of time-wasting as golf and backgammon and sun 
baths, but the painting of pictures was a vice new 
to them. 

The butler, who from long experience could 
instantly determine such things as the quality and 
extent of a guest’s thirst — and knew how to pro¬ 
vide the proper cure — was baffled by my be¬ 
havior. He hovered about, respectful but wor- 


io8 Folding Bedouins 

ried. Was there anything he could get me? A 
Tom Collins was refreshing on such a hot morn¬ 
ing. Or would I like a chair? When I assured 
him that all I craved was solitude, he said, 44 Very 
good, sir,” and stole silently away, a slightly broken 
man. It was evident that people who craved soli¬ 
tude were something he had not recently encoun¬ 
tered. 

The saturnine youth who spoke Italian and 
wore a green apron continued in my vicinity, 
plainly more sympathetic, but also more critical. 
He had apparently seen painters at work before, 
perhaps in his native Naples. But presently he 
made a clucking noise in his throat and went off 
about his business. From the expression on his 
face, I gathered that he did not consider me a 
painter. 

His dismissal did not bother me. I am not a 
painter, and never shall be. But I get the same 
fun out of trying to make paint behave that other 
people seem to get out of crossword puzzles, or 
even out of trying to make a little white ball roll 
into a hole in the center of a smooth plot of grass. 
I am sure that I had just as much fun today as any 
member of the household — and this, despite the 
fact that I did not succeed in making plaster look 
like plaster. 

I was unmoved even by the acid comments of 
the French maid, whom I overheard discussing 


Futile Fun 


109 


me. “ What a droll one,” she exclaimed, “ stand¬ 
ing up all day long, trying to make a picture. An’ 
ze picture zat he makes — pouf! Plus ga change , 
plus c’est la meme chose! ” 

Too true. But the same remark might be made 
of life itself. The more it changes the more it is 
the same thing. 












TIME FOR CANDOR 

This morning my host came to me in some embar¬ 
rassment. “ Just had a wire from my wife’s 
mother,” he said, flicking at his highly polished 
riding boots in the manner he has when pained. 
“ She is coming sooner than we expected. She is 
coming, in fact, this afternoon. What is more, 
she is bringing with her one of my wife’s more dis¬ 
mal cousins and a whole covey of children.” 

“ How delightful! ” I exclaimed. “ You needed 
company around the old place. I have been think¬ 
ing how lonesome it was with only twenty guests.” 

“ This is not a jesting matter,” he said bitterly. 
“ My wife’s mother is a serious woman, with strong 
feelings about the idle rich. She visits here as a 
sort of slumming expedition, and she spends her 
time making unpleasant cracks about the coming 
revolution. On the other hand, she is a woman 
with a taste for comfort. And that brings me to 
the point.” 

“ Your tone implies something unpleasant,” I 
said. 

He nodded somberly. “ The point is that we 
have run out of beds. It may seem strange to you 
that in all the caverns of this vast Spanish palace 


no 




Time for Candor m 

there is not a spare bed lurking about, but it is so. 
There is not even a hammock.” 

I understood what he was driving at, and I 
hastened to reassure him. “ Don’t give the matter 
another thought,” I cried. “ Only just across the 
street are spare beds —four of them. Your wife’s 
mother and your wife’s ill-favored cousin can sleep 
in our trailer, with nothing but the rustle of the 
palms to break their slumbers. They will be far 
from the carousing of the bloated bondholders that 
makes night hideous in your home.” 

My host did not seem altogether pleased with 
this generous offer. “ For nearly a week,” he said, 
“ I have had to look at that bizarre equipage of 
yours, forming practically the entire view from 
my window. For nearly a week I have heard you 
babbling about its comfort, its convenience, the 
beauty of its Honduras mahogany interior and the 
taste of its leaded glass windows. Almost you have 
convinced me; but I do not think you could con¬ 
vince my wife’s mother, or even my wife’s cousin. 
I do not even think you could convince my wife’s 
cousin’s children.” 

I turned for a brief glance at the bed in which, 
for nearly a week, I had slept so peacefully. “ I am 
a man of the people,” I said firmly. “ A child of 
the rough, open spaces. Too long have I lingered 
in this suburb of Sybaris, being awakened by an 
English accent with the news that my bath was 
quite ready, sir. I have softened under this sort of 


11 2 


Folding Bedouins 


thing. I have forgotten the hard realities of life. 
Sipping orange juice off a tray, fetched by a former 
Russian admiral, has made me lose interest in the 



burning issues of politics. It has dulled the edge 
of my zeal for a redistribution of wealth. I have 
almost become reconciled to having it distributed 
among such persons as yourself — lush growths of 
pelf to which I might cling in parasitic ease. 

“ I have fought against telling you this, fearful 
that I might hurt your feelings. But the time has 
come to be candid. I am homesick. My whole 
family is homesick — though not, I regret to say, 
quite as homesick as they should be. We all yearn 
for the cozy quiet of our trailer. We want to be 
alone with our books, and our pots and pans — 
just us four. ,, 









Time for Candor 113 

Without another word I reached for the pants 
which the valet in the green apron had pressed. 
“ This night shall we sleep like the gypsies we 
really are, and your wife’s mother can toss through 
the long watches of the dark, listening to the clink 
of glasses from your plutocratic patio. We shall 
be at rest on the bosom of nature, hearing naught 
but the sweet, fierce cries of the wild life in your 
jungle across the street.” 

“ Will you be staying there long? ” asked my 
friend with an accent which, I regret to say, 
sounded hopeful. 

I shook my head. “ The call of the open trail 
sings in our blood. It has been pleasant and in¬ 
structive, having this glimpse of economic security, 
but we yearn for the taste of our own coffee, the 
primitive intimacy of our own little bathroom. 
We are nomads, you know — Romany rye, and 
all that sort of thing — and even stucco walls 
and wooden ironwork imprison our souls. To¬ 
morrow, shortly after the sun rises, and before the 
bar at the Bath and Tennis has served its first dai¬ 
quiri, your vacant lot will be vacant indeed; for 
the wheels of our covered wagon will be rolling 
northward.” 

“ Oh,” said my friend, with a new gleam in his 
eye, “ I shall miss it.” 

He spoke as a man who had been cured of a 
broken leg would speak of missing his crutches. 



WHAT A WHIRLIGIG! 

Last night, in jubilation at his deliverance from 
our trailer, our host threw a party for us at one of 
the swankiest of the night spots. 

After we had dined, danced and drunk our fill, 
he proposed that we all move on to Bradley’s and 
have a go at the gaming tables. This, I may say, 



was not my idea. In fact, I objected to it. I had 
no funds for such diversion, and, to me, gambling 
isn’t a diversion, anyway. However, being nothing 
if not docile, I pretended to be the sort of fellow 

114 














What a Whirligig! 


H5 

who can’t sleep till he has dropped at least fifty 
bucks guessing wrong on the bouncing ball; and 
followed the mob to Bradley’s. The rest of the 
party sailed right on into the green and white hush 
of the gaming rooms. I was halted at the outer 
gate by an official with a blue jowl and eyes like 
shrimps, who informed me, with notable lack of 
cordiality, that only gents in evening clothes were 
admitted to the real part of the entertainment. 

This was really not news to me, and I countered 
by citing the special rule that gents who were leav¬ 
ing in the morning might appear in street or civil¬ 
ian attire. The fellow at the desk, who looked as 
if he had just sucked a lemon, replied that this rule 
applied only to members. 

Until that time I really had had no great desire 
to enter the sacred precincts. I had entered them 
many times before, and had never been greatly 
amused. But human nature being what it is, I 
warmed to the argument and said acidly that I was 
a member, and had been for some twenty years. 
The fellow was not as impressed as he should have 
been. He said — quite accurately — that I had 
not joined the club this year. Stung by this, I 
played a trump. Was Colonel Bradley present? 
The fellow’s lips twisted in a supercilious smile at 
this question. He had seen this card played be¬ 
fore. Yes, he said, Colonel Bradley was on the 
premises, but he saw no one after 5 o’clock. 

Until this point I had not given much thought 


Folding Bedouins 


116 

to interviewing Colonel Bradley. I knew he was 
a busy man, what with his racing stables and the 
management of his gambling establishment. For 
that matter, I was a busy man myself, what with 
managing my trailer and things like that. But I 
was stung by the challenge of inaccessibility. So, 
as unpleasant as the chap behind the desk, I de¬ 
manded pen and paper and dashed off a note. 

“ Take this in and let us see what we shall see,” 
I ordered grandly. 

A moment or two later, to the great astonish¬ 
ment of the guardian and all his assistants (and 
not a little to my own), Colonel Bradley appeared. 
He was not, I must admit, effusive in his greeting. 
He was, in fact, slightly on the chill side. “ What 
did you wish to see me about? ” he inquired. 

“ I did not wish to see you about anything,” I 
replied truthfully. “ I merely wished to see you. 
You are the world’s greatest redistributor of 
wealth, and I could not bear to leave these parts 
without presenting my respects.” 

He was warmed slightly by this, and I asked 
him how business was. He said it was punk. With 
one great hotel closed, and a still greater one torn 
down — the Poinciana — there were left in Palm 
Beach only about five thousand potential custom¬ 
ers. Many of these had lost either their interest 
in gambling or the cash with which to gratify their 
interest. 

Presently, after some mutual reminiscences — 


What a Whirligig l 


X1 7 

both of us having first visited the place about the 
turn of the century; he to open the Beach Club, 
and I to follow my nurse to the alligator farm — 
he shook hands and asked if there was anything 
else he could do for me. Yes, I said, there was. 
He could get a greeter for his front office who 
would not act like the desk sergeant of a police sta¬ 
tion. “ How’s that? ” he asked, cupping his ear. 
“ Speak a little louder, please, I’m a trifle deaf.” 



I took extreme pleasure in repeating my words 
in the loudest possible tone. I hope they resulted 
in a certain party’s having a lesson in deportment 
before dawn broke over Lake Worth. When I am 
ejected from any sort of establishment, I like to 
have it done suavely. 

After that, conversation rather languished. The 




















Folding Bedouins 


118 

colonel excused himself and went away. I re¬ 
mained standing in outer darkness, being glow¬ 
ered at by gents who obviously didn’t like me, but 
who also didn’t know just what to do about it. 
Probably there were machine guns trained on me 
from behind grilled loopholes. 

When my friends had lost all their money, and 
came out to sympathize with me for not having 
been able to lose any, one of them said that he had 
overheard one of the minions whispering to Colo¬ 
nel Bradley about a newspaper reporter, a mys¬ 
terious and probably dangerous fellow, who had 
come in a trailer. 

Make what you can of this. It baffles me. Either 
Colonel Bradley has a marvelous spy service, or I 
have come actually to look my occupation and my 
means of transport. 

And so, with this last memory of Palm Beach to 
carry with me — off to the highway again. And 
from a Spanish palace, with a butler and a French 
maid to see that my bath was hot, to Ye Olde Tour- 
iste Campe, with cold water in a dirty tin dish. 
Ah, my masters, what a whirligig is life! 



THE WRONG ROAD 

After a long argument this morning, as to whether 
or not we should go several hundred miles out of 
our way to visit Charleston, it was decided that we 
should not — that the narrow, ruin-lined streets 
of St. Augustine, where carriages are still drawn 
by horses, would provide enough in the way of 
quaintness and antiquity. 

So, off we went. Heaven, however, has a way 
of juggling the purposes of men. Months ago I 
clipped an item from a country newspaper. It 
seemed so symbolic of man’s futile efforts to cir¬ 
cumvent his fate: 

“ Dr. and Mrs. F. A. Graham returned Friday 
from a trip abroad. They booked passage for 
England, but part way over the boat ran into a 
storm and a rudder was broken, making it neces¬ 
sary for the boat to return to St. John’s, N. F., to be 
put in dry dock. The Grahams then booked pas¬ 
sage on a boat going back to Boston. They stopped 
at Halifax, N. S., en route. Dr. and Mrs. Graham 
visited Dr. Leroy Hartman in New York, friends 
in North Carolina, and from there went to New 
Orleans, where Dr. Graham took a course in plate 
work.” 


”9 




120 


Folding Bedouins 


A dentist starts for England and winds up doing 
plate work in New Orleans. We start for Atlanta 
and at sundown find ourselves — in Charleston. 
Everybody blames everybody else for it, but it was 
just fate, that’s all. That, and a wrong road, too 
narrow to permit turning the trailer around. Fate 
is especially inexorable when you get a trailer on 
a wrong road. 

We were a little troubled because our Golden 
Guide — that compendium of undependability 
— mentioned only one tourist camp in Charleston; 
and that one wasn’t in Charleston, but nine miles 
north of it. However, said I — always cheery — 
Charleston was a great tourist center, a place of 
notable beauty and historic interest; and there 
were bound to be many camps there. Well, there 
weren’t many camps; there was only one and that 
one was nine miles out, along a road running be¬ 
tween a railroad and the quarter of the more im¬ 
poverished Negroes. Furthermore, it was a camp 
without provision for trailers. 

It was dark by the time we had effected a toler¬ 
able mooring. Thus far, the beautiful gardens 
and the charming old houses of historic Charleston 
had rather eluded us. But we were not to be con¬ 
quered. We had heard of a quaint old inn, a place 
of suave elegance, where Ravenels and Beauregards 
vied with Cabots and Lodges in looking down 
their noses at one another; and we resolved to dine 
there. 


121 


The Wrong Road 

The proprietor of our camp looked rather be¬ 
wildered when we inquired the location of this inn. 
He looked much as the manager of a flop for the 
unemployed would look at one who asked how to 
reach the Waldorf-Astoria. However, he told us, 
and we drove nine dark miles to the water front 
and the white columned portico of the inn. A 
lady in white satin and a gentleman in dinner 
jacket were just entering. We followed and a 
courteous young man at the desk, after some ques¬ 
tioning, gave us a card authorizing us to dine in 
the establishment. 

In the center of what was once a private house, 
where dashing gallants twirled their rapiers, 
quaffed goblets of Madeira and danced the turbu¬ 
lent rigadoon, was a pool of water around which, 
at small tables, sat beautifully attired people, 
mostly of advanced age. 

We presented our ticket to the grand vizier, or 
head waiter, who coldly directed us to await fur¬ 
ther instructions in the drawing room. There we 
found several others, like ourselves, in limbo. 
After about an hour the summons came and we 
were permitted to enter the sacred precincts of the 
dining room. There, in an atmosphere of deco¬ 
rum as thick as custard, we had a Sunday evening 
snack of some half-dozen courses. There was no 
laughter in the room. Nobody spoke above a 
whisper. It was like a classroom in etiquette, or 
the wait before the minister arrives. The only 


122 Folding Bedouins 

sound came from a Negro quartet, singing spirit¬ 
uals in the gallery above. 

When thoroughly stuffed we repaired to the 
drawing rooms with their white marble fireplaces 
and high walls covered with pale-blue tapestry, and 
colonial sofas, equipped with antimacassars. The 
air reeked with gentility, like the odor of tuberoses 
in a mortuary chapel. We swooned under it and 
went quickly to the desk to see how much it had all 
come to. It came to three dollars a head, not count¬ 
ing what the grand vizier seemed to expect and 
didn’t get. I now understood why the keeper of 
the tourist camp had looked so peculiar when we 
asked our way to the inn. 

Alas for my dreams of gallants in ruffles and peri¬ 
wigs, treading the stately measures of the minuet 
in the storied chambers of this ancient mansion. 
It was not an antique mansion. It was built in the 
gay but garish nineties. 

And so, having rubbed shoulders with the 
quality, we drove back to our trailer. Ours is a 
life of contrast. Tonight we dined with opulent 
elegance and in the morning we shall breakfast 
with truck drivers. On the whole, we prefer the 
truck drivers. Their laugh is heartier. 



WATERSPOUTS IN THE SEA 

Rapidly, we move northward. As the landscape 
changes, with the palmettos disappearing and cold 
patches of snow taking their place, I find my emo¬ 
tions changing, too. 

Those sunlit days in Florida were a pleasant 
interlude from reality, but already they seem re¬ 
mote. No longer is the eye warmed by great white 
houses set in shrubbery and flowers and singing 
green lawns. No longer do we dispute for right 
of way with custom-built cars driven by smartly 
uniformed chauffeurs. The roads are empty, save 
for an occasional shabby truck. Scattered houses 
straggle, unpainted and decaying, on bleak hill¬ 
sides. Lean men in overalls stare coldly as we pass. 
Gaunt, pallid women in shawls and ancient bon¬ 
nets look out from the shadow of their rickety 
porches. Children in thin, patched jackets cluster 
in the red mud, waiting for the school bus. We 
have left the latitude of luxury. 

Factories appear, the sooty smoke from their 
stacks climbing slowly to the pewter sky. At twi¬ 
light grimy men, lights still burning in their caps, 
come drifting out of the coal mines. 

I feel like an explorer, working up to the head- 
123 






124 Folding Bedouins 

waters of a great river. In Florida the stream of 
wealth rolls broad and tranquil. It is the culmina¬ 
tion of the web of little creeks which rise in the 
hills and dales of the north. Each sooty mine, each 
cluster of hovels and factories, each patch of tilled 
land, contributes its bit to the flood which finds its 
destiny in Miami and Palm Beach. 

Under the sun of those places the torrent of 
wealth created in the bleak farms and dingy fac¬ 
tories rises in iridescent mist. In the forests thou¬ 
sands tend the little cups on the pitch pine, toiling 
arduously among the gnats to accumulate enough 
turpentine for the purchase of a single bottle of 
champagne at the Bath and Tennis Club. In the 
hills men labor from dawn to dusk, picking out 
enough lumps of carbon to provide the where¬ 
withal for a single toss of the dice at Bradley's. 

Well, and what of it? asks the realist. The an¬ 
swer, of course, is that if the possessors of great 
wealth were stripped of everything the lot of those 
who produced the wealth would not be perceptibly 
changed. Great wealth is like a waterspout in the 
sea — it attracts attention out of all proportion to 
its significance. If all the waterspouts were sud¬ 
denly cut down the rise in the level of the sea would 
not be enough to be measured. 

I cannot get very excited over any of the plans 
now current for artificially and violently limiting 
the possession of wealth. I can't see that any more 
laws are necessary. If I were a dictator the only 


Waterspouts in the Sea 


125 


law I should enforce would be one making it ob¬ 
ligatory for rich people to do a certain amount of 
travel. And it wouldn’t be travel by limited train 



or by limousine, with stops only at white-and-gold 
hotels. It would be travel by trailer. It would 
be an excellent thing if those whose lives are 
packed in velvet could get around and see what 
life on the bare boards is like. 

These thoughts occur to me as I repose where 
we have camped for the night. It is a morass of 
mud to start with and the rain falls unceasingly. 
Clustered miserably in the valley below us is a 
hamlet of decrepit shanties. Darkness has fallen, 
but there are few lights showing. The folk here¬ 
abouts go to bed early. There is nothing else to 
do. Besides, light costs money. 








Folding Bedouins 


126 

The region is just recovering from an unprece¬ 
dented fall of snow. Roofs caved in under it and 
roads were impassable for days. It is melting now 
and the hillside above us is a reticule of rivulets. 
The nearest hotel is miles away, over doubtful 
roads. It is at such a time that the advantages of 
dragging your home with you are most apparent. 
A fire crackles briskly in our stove, a savory pot au 
feu simmers in the kettle. We are dry, warm and 
comfortable. Outside the wind may howl and the 
tempest rage, but we are snug indeed. There are 
moments, such as those in which you want to halt 
where only diagonal parking is permitted, when 
you use bad words about trailers. But in moments 
like the present there is only rejoicing in the pos¬ 
session of one. 



TOUGH GOING 

It has been a tough day and I am now prepared 
to testify that a trailer can go anywhere a car can go. 

Dawn was just breaking over the Blue Ridge 
this morning when we pried ourselves loose from 
the mud of the mountain side and took to what 
poets call the open road. It quickly transpired 
that the road could no more be called “ open ” 
than the hills could properly be called “ blue.” 
What on the map is the broad red line of Route 
25 proved to be a narrow, undulant, twisting an¬ 
guish of chuckholes, washouts and detour signs. 

The rain came down in sheets, blotting out even 
the skyline of the mountains. The swollen 
streams were like brown calcimine. The fields 
were great lakes of ochre water. On the hillsides 
lay whole patches of pines, prostrate under the 
buffeting of snow and dislodged shale. The signs, 
“ Look Out for Falling Rock,” were sharply em¬ 
phasized as we heard the roar of landslides above 
the crash of thunder. 

There were times when eternity seemed close — 
once when a boulder the size of a watermelon 


127 



is8 Folding Bedouins 

landed in the road just ahead of us and bounced 
off into the canyon of the French Broad . . . what 
a quaint name for a river! 

There were detours in plenty — tortuous afflic¬ 
tions, knee-deep in greasy mud and not always well 
marked. 

Through it all, careening and bouncing, the 
covered wagon followed faithfully along. There 


were moments when I felt sure that all was over — 
an especially memorable one when a wheel took 
the air where a part of the road had disappeared. 
But everything held. And when at last, long after 
dark, we came safely to port there was no evidence 
of damage — not even so much as a broken dish. 

I am able to state that trailers can “ take it.” I 
can also state with equal emphasis that our small 










Tough Going 


i *9 

car can take it, too. The modern motorcar has 
gone far in dependability over the machines of 
even five years ago. 

The automobile headlight, however, remains 
at the horse-and-buggy level. Not a particle of 
progress seems to have been made in the effort to 
provide a light which will not blind the other fel¬ 
low. There are various devices on the market 
which are supposed to eliminate glare. I have 
seen no evidence that they do. 

On this trip I have seen a half-dozen large trucks 
lying overturned in ditches — gruesome spec¬ 
tacles. I cannot say what caused these mishaps but 
I would guess (1) headlight glare, (2) sleepy 
drivers. Truck drivers are sometimes required to 
work longer hours than the human frame can en¬ 
dure. And a sleepy driver is more dangerous than 
a drunken one. 

While on this theme I might mention that good 
driving seems to be on the increase. There is un¬ 
questionably less speed, and infrequent enough to 
be notable are instances of such follies as passing 
on hills and curves. Still at large, however, are 
numerous examples of the sort of imbecile who 
goes past parked cars at forty miles an hour and 
who sticks too close to the car in front of him. 

Tonight it was our fortune to gladden the heart 
of a lonely old man. We had halted at a roadside 
hashery, where an oafish youth admitted reluc¬ 
tantly that we might dine. Under pressure and 


Folding Bedouins 


13° 

after mysterious calls within, he confessed to the 
possession of some steaks. We had taken our 
places at a bare table close to the bar and slot 
machines. But the young man conducted us out¬ 
side. A door was unlocked and we climbed a 
flight of stairs to make the acquaintance of an ar¬ 
tist named Jim. In white jacket and chef’s cap, 
his black face wreathed in smiles, he assured us 
that we should fare of the best. 

He took an incredible time about it, but when 
it came it was not to be bettered by the best of 
Park Avenue. “ Yes,” said Jim, ” I’ve worked in 
some right smart places. But here — nobody 
never comes.” 

When I asked him, as he brought in a fresh tray 
of “ hot bread,” if he could make beaten biscuit, 
his face clouded. “In the old days, when I worked 
in big houses, I made ’em. But now. . . .” He 
shrugged his shoulders in a gesture oddly wistful. 

It was easy to picture him at the stove of a manor 
house in the blue grass country serving out fried 
chicken to guests coming in from the hunt. But 
time had marched on. It had left him stranded 
— an artist without tools and without audience; 
perhaps the saddest thing in this world. 



QUESTIONS ANSWERED 

Now, home at last, we sing with Longfellow: 

Stay, stay at home, my heart, and rest; 
Homekeeping hearts are happiest. 

For those that wander they know not where 
Are full of trouble and full of care: 

To stay at home is best. 

Last night, idle and empty, our mud-covered 
wagon stood at the curb, its work done. When I 
came out this morning I found two men eying it 
with what seemed to me a hostile gaze. “ Are you 
the proprietor of this conveyance? ” they inquired. 
And when I admitted the impeachment they dis¬ 
played stars! 

What a dismal climax! Four thousand miles 
without so much as a scowl from the police, only 
to be pinched for parking without lights at my own 
front door. It was too much! 

But I had guessed wrong. The hawkshaws 
merely wished to look inside. They were of a 
mind to try trailering themselves. What did I 
think of it, really? 

131 







Folding Bedouins 


132 

Here goes for an answer to the questions most 
commonly asked: 

Q. — Is it difficult to drive a trailer? 

A. — No. The women folk did most of our 
driving, even in the heart of city traffic. 

Q. — How fast can you go? 

A. — Faster than you ought to. We reached 
sixty-five miles an hour and could have gone faster. 
Our last day’s run was four hundred and fifty 
miles. 

Q. — How about turning and backing? 

A. — Turns can be made in wide streets. Back¬ 
ing requires practice, but can be done surprisingly 
well. 

Q. — How does it behave at high speed? 

A. — It takes curves well, travels on any sort of 
road, does not sway appreciably, and, except on 
ice, can be braked easily. Owing to its balance on 
one pair of wheels, the weight on the rear of the 
power car does not seem great — I should guess 
three hundred pounds at rest; less when under 
way. 

Q . —How about gas consumption? 

A. — Something like eleven per cent more than 
for the car alone. 

Q. — Limbering and unlimbering? 

A. — On a hard surface a child can do it in a 
minute or two. In sand, or with rust on the jack, 
it takes longer. The coupling on ours was in¬ 
genious, and, I should guess, foolproof. 


Questions Answered 133 

Q. — What about parking? 

A. — Vacant lots, farmyards, gas stations and 
tourist camps of varying degrees of cleanliness and 
comfort. Most of them are primitive. We saw 
none that could be called luxurious. 

Q. — Roads, bridges and ferries? 

A. — Trailers weigh less than cars. Tolls seem 
to run about a third higher than for cars alone. 
We encountered no roads that were closed to trail¬ 
ers, though one cop tried to argue us into consider¬ 
ing ourselves a truck. 

Q. — Can passengers ride in the trailer? 

A. — We did, even preparing meals and writ¬ 
ing articles. We did not, however, do it often. 

Q. — What about beds? 

A. — Ours were fairly comfortable — some¬ 
thing between a cot and a beautyrest. With two 
persons in them, mutual forbearance is obligatory. 
Tossing is penalized; snores echo. 

Q.— Cooking and heating? 

A. — A two-burner gasoline stove does one; a 
stove using chestnut coal does the other. By plug¬ 
ging into regular lighting circuits, electric gadgets 
of all kinds are available. 

Q. — Plumbing? 

A. — This is the Achilles heel of trailer-trip¬ 
ping. We had “ facilities ” aboard, but for the 
most part we used what we could find along the 
road. They left much to be desired in the way 
of elegance and sanitation. 


Folding Bedouins 


134 

Q. — Water, ice, provisions, and so forth? 

A. — We carried thirty gallons of water, tapped 
by two pump-operated faucets. The refrigerator 
took fifty pounds of ice, a charge lasting two or 
three days. 

Q. — What about the young man who joined 
your party, but was not mentioned afterward? 

A. — He stuck it out manfully. I may add that 
no young man ever had a sharper closeup of his 
bride-to-be and the nature of her parents — and 
vice versa. True love may not run smoothly in 
a trailer, but whatever befalls this romance, it will 
certainly not be because it was built on illusion. 
Crockery may survive a month in a trailer, but no 
illusion can. 

Q. — What do the women of the party think 
about trailer-life? 

A. — They have read the proofs of this book, 
and corroborate all statements. 

Q. — Would you advise me to try tripping in a 
trailer? 

A. — Friends and fellow countrymen, I 
wouldn’t advise anybody to do anything. De gus- 
tibus non est disputandum: and some people don’t 
like oysters. The only way to find out is to try it. 













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